


You And Me And This Temptation

by leupagus



Series: Strummy-Strummy-La-La Verse [1]
Category: Schitt's Creek, musician RPF
Genre: M/M, Musicians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2020-09-28 05:16:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20420525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/pseuds/leupagus
Summary: When Eli disappeared to God knew where with the keys to the Rose family fortune, their lawyer had pulled them all into the living room with a chipper expression and a folder. David hadn’t listened, the sounds of furniture, paintings, his life being carted out the door overwhelming everything else. But Dad’s voice cut through.“Schitt Records? That was ajoke—“ and it still is a joke, almost two and a half years later. The biggest joke in the music industry, and David hears the laughter everywhere he goes.





	1. Chapter 1

“Okay, but _why_ are you making me do this.” David doesn’t ask, because it’s not a question; it’s a declaration, something he’s learned in the long years since he and Stevie were coworkers, then friends, then — something, almost, not quite — and now they’re people who drag each other to shitty bars in shitty basements in shitty Toronto, except only Stevie is that.

“I’m not _making_ you do anything,” Stevie lies right to his actual face as they collect her beer and his wine from the bartender. “_You_ offered to comfort _me_.”

“I don’t think I said ‘comfort’ so much as I said ‘support you in your time of—‘“ he waves at her generally, carefully not to spill. “Loss, or whatever.”

Not that Jake qualifies as a loss, per se; he hadn’t even tried to get out of the contract, which Stevie keeps saying is the important thing. And David of all people knows that above-average sex can only take you so far when the other guy is an emotionally illiterate carpenter/rockstar who responded to a breakup text with “Bummer.”

“Well, this is you supporting me.” Stevie takes a swig and leans back against the bar; David admires the clean line of her neck and chest like he’s done a thousand times before, absentminded appreciation, the way he looks at a beautiful coat or listens to a new record; willing to let it pass through his fingers, like everything else.

“You’re not…_performing_, are you,” David doesn’t-ask.

Stevie gives him a long look. “You’ve known me for over two years,” she says, even. “Do you think I’m likely to break out into song?”

“You’re a talent scout for a major record label,” he feels obliged to point out.

“Uh, first of all, it’s not major, and second of all, so are you,” she says.

This is, sadly, irrefutable.

🎼

When Eli disappeared to God knew where with the keys to the Rose family fortune, their lawyer had pulled them all into the living room with a chipper expression and a folder. David hadn’t listened, the sounds of furniture, paintings, his _life_ being carted out the door overwhelming everything else. But Dad’s voice cut through.

“Schitt Records? That was a _joke_—“ and it still is a joke, almost two and a half years later. The biggest joke in the music industry, and David hears the laughter everywhere he goes.

🎼

Roland Schitt had been managing his wife and an extremely chipper singer-songwriter who went by “Twyla” and did tarot card readings after every set. Schitt Records was worth approximately nothing; probably why the government had let them keep it. When Dad finally exercised his ownership clause and made Roland an ex-officio (read: non-voting) board member, Roland had actually cackled with delight and wished them all the best, taking his “President of” title and a small stipend with him. Jocelyn and Twyla stuck around, although David still isn’t sure that Twyla’s all that aware of the change in management.

And anyway, as far as David’s concerned, the only thing of value at Schitt Records, at least at first, was Stevie.

🎼

They’d put Alexis back in the studio for want of any better ideas; David had found a semi-decent, semi-sober songwriter to give her some of the songs Meghan and Ariana had rejected. “Pullin’ Up Alexis” didn’t so much as crack the top 200 but it had put Schitt Records in the black, at least, even if Alexis did go white-faced and brittle at the awful venues David coaxed her into for the better part of a year — county fairs and no-name festivals where the audience wanted to jeer and heckle, where her dancing would get her laughed offstage if her singing didn’t. But every time he’d tell her she could quit (she couldn’t) and that they’d find another way to get the company on its feet (they wouldn’t), she’d lift her chin and smile and ask her where they were going next, and David loved her more than he’d ever, ever tell her.

And when the tour ended, David gritted his teeth and went out with Stevie to find something else. They found Ronnie, who hates them all but has hands like an angel on the piano; Jake who’s prettier onstage than off but who can draw a reliable crowd; even Ray, whose one-man band act is surprisingly lucrative, though David suspects that’s because anyone who listens can’t actually believe what’s happening.

Schitt Records still isn’t worth buying, but it’s worth _something_; worth spending late nights in small towns, worth sleepless weekends working festivals, worth more than David had ever expected to find.

But he’s still looking, he knows, for something else.

🎼

Even more insultingly, the open mic has a _theme_; “90’s Nostalgia!” which means too many bad Alanis covers and one truly offensive attempt at “I Will Always Love You” that has David ordering his next glass of wine in a pint glass.

Stevie is laughing, though — she’s happy, in tune with the people who are clearly here for their respective friends onstage, leading the shaky ones through the choruses and cheering with far more enthusiasm than is merited when each of them wraps up.

“This is horrifying,” David tells her as some guy in his 60s gets gently ushered offstage and there’s a blessed break.

“I know,” Stevie replies, eyes shining. “It’s _great_.”

And it is, in a weird way that David would never have enjoyed in his other life; he would never have set foot in here, would never have been friends with someone as grounded and solid and plaid as Stevie in the first place. So he takes a drink and doesn’t suggest they leave, but _does_ pick a fight about sending Ray to ACL.

Stevie obligingly takes the bait and they’re halfway through the comfortable argument about riders when David realizes the strummy-strummy lala in the background is a) recognizable, b) good, and c) _infuriating._

The guy onstage is best described as “unprepossessing accountant,” wearing an ugly shirt and ugly slacks and uglier shoes and an _astonishingly_ ugly fringed vest that’s probably (hopefully) a joke, judging by the wolf whistles from a table near the stage. But he’s got a smile like a searchlight as he rounds the corner of the first verse:

_“I’m caught up in the midst of you_

_And I cannot resist…”_

David flails around until he makes contact with Stevie’s — okay, her face, which she’ll probably complain about later, but he’s too incensed. “He’s singing _Mariah_?”

Stevie swats his hand away. “He’s not bad.”

“I—“ David clutches at his pint glass. Fringed Vest, still grinning into the crowd and unaware of David’s newborn vendetta against him, continues.

_Boy, if I do  
__The things you want me to  
__The way I used to do  
__Would you love me, baby  
__Hold me, feeling now  
__Go and break my heart_

The entire bar joins in on the chorus, Fringe Vest leading them like some hick accountant Pied Piper:

_Heartbreaker, you got the best of me  
__But I just keep on coming back incessantly  
__Oh, why did you have to run your game on me  
__I should have known right from the start  
__You'd go and break my heart_

Fringed Vest does not, thank God, try his hand at rapping the break but the crowd seems reluctant to let him actually finish the song, the choruses getting progressively louder and more boisterous until Fringed Vest puts a line underneath and steps back from the mic so they can finally take the goddamn hint.

“That was—“ _awful_, he’s about to say, but the problem is that it _wasn’t_. There’s not a whole lot a Canadian accountant can add to Mariah Carey, especially with the advent of Lip Synch Battle. But it hadn’t felt patronizing or mocking; Fringed Vest knew every word, sang with a voice that couldn’t hold a match to Mariah but still expressed some sort of playful longing. He’d been earnest where most people tonight had clung to trite. It… _worked_.

So now David’s even more enraged.

“C’mon,” Stevie says, slipping through the crowd with the weary ease of someone who’s been doing this half her life. David tromps behind in her wake, bumping up against the same people Stevie glides past and almost losing her twice before she gets to the dinky curtain that demarcates the bar from the backstage.

It smells like vomit; David immediately flips through the various acts tonight and makes a bet with himself that it was the guy with the accordion, even while Stevie makes her way over to the side of the stage. Fringed Vest is talking to somebody else and drinking — god, Red Mountain, David is vetoing any contract Stevie tries to push on this guy for that alone.

But Stevie’s introducing them and Fringed Vest extends a hand. “Patrick,” he says, grip firm. Up close he’s — not attractive, exactly, no eyebrows to speak of and a haircut that screams middle management, that smile still the most interesting thing about him. But it’s _very_ interesting.

“David,” he admits, aware of Stevie’s narrowed eyes.

“David Rose,” Patrick says, worryingly. “You own Schitt Records.”

He blinks; this is possibly the first time anyone’s said the name of the company without smirking. “Co-own,” he corrects.

“You manage a friend of mine,” Patrick continues, “Ray? Butani?”

“We only manage one Ray, don’t worry,” Stevie tells him.

“How are you friends with _Ray_?” David demands. “He plays a _vibraphone_.”

“We both went to Rotman,” and that explains so much about both Ray and Patrick. “He was pretty excited when he signed.”

“Yes, the glamour of the pub circuit,” David says. “Who can resist the allure of all this,” and he almost hits a girl with beads in her hair and a banjo in her hand climbing onstage.

“It’s got its charms,” Patrick says, still smiling.

🎼

When Stevie finally brings up offering Patrick Brewer a contract, all he can really come up with is “he drinks bad beer and thinks it’s funny to wear a fringed vest onstage,” neither of which are dealbreakers that anyone else will respect. So Stevie’s given the green light and David clenches his jaw.

"What’s your problem?" Stevie hisses. They're downing some dubious hotdogs just outside Yonge Dundas Square right before the lineup for tonight starts; Ronnie's performing, wedged between some sort of belly-dancer act and a guy who looks _exactly_ like Marlene Dietrich with a harp. The Believe Guy is having a fun night, at least, bellowing at the concertgoers streaming in. David’s going to have to give him another 5/5 review. “You thought he was good, too.”

“Yeah, I also thought if I had to look at that vest for another second I was gonna pull my own eyeballs out,” he says. “And I _also_ also thought that anyone who’s serious about this would already at least have a demo tape, which, might I remind you? He does not.”

“David, hate to break it to you,” and whatever she’s about to say is something that she’s not really going to hate breaking to him, “But anyone who’s serious about this isn’t going to sign with Schitt Records in the first place.”

She’s right, which is unacceptable. “There’s more to talent spotting than—“

“Spotting talent?” Stevie says. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re not exactly in a position to be picky. Patrick’s good and he can work a crowd and we can get him different clothes.”

“_Better_ clothes,” David insists. “And then burn the ones he has.”

Stevie eyes him over her lemonade. “So _that’s_ how it is,” she says, and doesn’t answer his increasingly strident demands to know how _what_ is for the rest of the evening.

🎼

It’s a moot point, anyway, because Patrick declines. Stevie shrugs it off at their next meeting, already moving on to an elderly beat poet she knows who’s been getting some buzz and might want to put together some sort of spoken word thing that they could produce, but David’s still processing.

“He said _no_?”

“Yeah, he said no,” Stevie repeats, not sounding nearly as outraged as the situation calls for. “Anyway, Bob isn’t always that, uh, sober, but I think if we—“

“_Why _did he say no?”

She spreads her hands. “He didn’t really give a reason, just said ‘no thanks, good luck,’ and said something about financial planning management. At which point I kind of tuned out.”

“’No thanks and good luck’?” David takes a deep breath.

Mom clears her throat. She’s on record as hating these meetings, which makes sense because they’re wretched, a sort of enforced family time combined with enforced listening to other people talk combined with Dad’s rule of no drinking in the office, and clearing her throat is the most she’s contributed in six months. But David takes the hint.

He’ll just have to get more information elsewhere.

🎼

“‘No thanks and good luck’?” David demands, a few hours later.

Patrick blinks at him. “Hi,” he says. “Have a seat.”

They’re in some sort of office, with a door and two windows showcasing the dreary efficiency of downtown Toronto. It’s honestly nicer than David might have imagined, if he’d imagined Patrick’s day job; his experience with businesses like this comes mostly from _Office Space_, but there don’t seem to be any cubicles or men in distressing Winchesters.

Still, it’s very beige and David waves his hands in negation. “I’m not staying. Why did you say no?”

“Okay.” Patrick sits back down in the desk chair. “Did you _want_ me to say yes?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but most people who have a dedicated _wardrobe_ when they go to an Open Mic Night are thrilled when a record company comes sniffing around.”

“Well, Stevie did say I’d have to ditch the vest,” says Patrick, who David is learning is a real asshole. “That was a bridge too far for me.”

“Okay,” David sighs and sits down, rubbing his face, because this wouldn’t have worked. Even if Stevie had signed him, David would be the one who’d have to work with the guy, and he already wanted fire him.

“Look,” Patrick continues, “It’s flattering, not least because you went to all the trouble to track me down at my office, where I work, during business hours, which is _when _I work, in order to tell me I should be thrilled to have the chance to get yelled at you every day for the rest of my life.”

“Well,” he admits, “When you put it that way.”

“David—“ For the first time since they’ve met, he thinks Patrick’s being serious. “For what it’s worth, it’s not about you. I just don’t think I’d be very good.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” David has to ask, smiling in spite himself, because he’s been on the receiving end of that too-serious look far too many times but usually he gets to at least touch the guy’s dick first. “Because for the record, I prefer the line ‘you deserve so much better’ or some variation thereof.”

Patrick laughs, louder and deeper than David expected; like it’s been bubbling inside him all this time and finally had to come out. “You do, David,” he says, expression open and — _fond_, is the word, something David’s not used to and isn’t sure he could handle on a day-to-day basis, anyway.

Which is why it’s so confusing when he leaves ten minutes later with a signed contract, the addendum that Patrick Brewer retains personal image control written in cramped pen at the bottom and initialed, under protest, by both of them.

It gets worse.

🎼

Recording an album is both easier and harder than people think. Easier, because if you can hire a competent producer and studio space then most of your work is already done. Harder, because then you have to actually _listen_ to everything.

“Okay that’s great, you’re sounding a little Rachel Brooks right now, though?” Karen says, through the intercom. David, lying down on the couch in the cramped studio and wishing he was dead, manages to open one eye to check Patrick’s reaction. Some musicians get discouraged when they start getting critiques; others get snippy.

Patrick seems to get amused. “Is that good or bad?”

“Well, it depends if you want to be a plucky young Nashville star,” Karen replies.

“She’s actually from Kingston,” Patrick says, strumming idly as they reset again. “What do you think, David?” he adds, raising his voice as though the speaker isn’t more than loud enough to carry.

David contemplates getting up, but that would involve getting up. “I think I’ve heard this fucking song twenty-seven times today and I would like to kill everyone here and then myself,” he says.

Karen snorts and David can hear the tremor of laughter in Patrick’s voice when he says, “If you’re annoyed now, think how much you’re going to love listening to these songs every night we’re on tour.”

“I’ll have booze then,” he points out, and shuts his eyes again.

🎼

The album is an investment but not a risky one, because Toronto fucking _loves_ Patrick Brewer, loves his strummy-strummy-la-la — “is that really what you call it?” — loves his button-ups and his casual conversations with the audience or the band members or occasionally with David, who stays firmly behind the curtain even while Patrick’s yelling at him to google the name of that movie Gene Hackman was in where there was a submarine or whatever godforsaken tangent he’s gotten himself into onstage.

They _particularly_ love his once-a set covers of some seemingly random song that he dedicates, every time, to “someone very special in my life.” Sometimes it’s a soulful rendition of “SexyBack,” sometimes it’s a honkytonk version of “Save Tonight,” but it always makes David want to wring his neck.

“‘Take Me Out To The Ballgame’? Really? _Really_?” David hisses at him one night as he comes offstage at Massey Hall. He’s just the opening act, but it’s still a packed house and there were enough people singing along to make David only moderately homicidal.

“They’re playing the Mets tonight, and we could’ve made it,” Patrick snipes right back, glancing down at his watch — he’s the kind of asshole who wears a watch, this whole thing was such a mistake except for how it’s bringing in quite a lot of money and also except for how Patrick’s got a bead of sweat at his temple, darkening his hair.

“It’s like managing a ten-year-old,” David says, and thrusts a single, probably-shitty ticket at him. “Give me your guitar and please know that I hate you.”

“David,” Patrick whispers, clutching the ticket, his eyes shining. He looks up at David and slowly puts his hand on his shoulder. “David. I hate you too.”

Then he’s gone, leaving David with his stupid guitar and the sting of a smack that was probably intended for his ass but had landed on his thigh. It’s not notably less infuriatingly arousing.

🎼

Their first tour is a rehash, more or less, of Alexis’s disaster through the continent, which David’s not exactly looking forward to — but the album is out, it exists now, and it’s not going to do anything without a tour or a viral video. Alexis and Stevie promise to do what they can about getting Hannah Hart or someone to lip-synch to “Apollo,” but it’s a long shot to say the fucking least. “Mostly because it’s depressing as hell and most youtubers like to sing, like, ‘Uptown Funk’ or something,” Alexis had pointed out.

There’s a lot that’s terrible in a familiar way, and a lot that’s terrible in a way very specific to managing Patrick Brewer. He keeps up the infuriatingly stupid cover shtick, complete with dedication, which does help with sales but also helps with David’s impending coronary event. He suffers through everything from early Alanis to present-day Lizzo, and every time he has to listen to Patrick’s stupid fucking smile curling through the microphone as he dedicates the song to someone _very special in my life_ that David knows doesn’t exist, is just an excuse for Patrick to fuck with him because his God is a pitiless monster.

Still, David’s got a job to do, an itinerary to plan and shitty motels to fall asleep in at 4 am, stumbling into the car at the latest possible checkout time to be greeted by Patrick Fucking Brewer who apparently can operate on three hours of sleep and some herbal tea. They argue over who’s got to drive the first leg and who gets to sleep for a few more hours — David always wins, he’s not sure why Patrick’s still arguing — they argue over what shitty drive-through or diner to stop at for lunch, they argue over what Patrick’s going to play that night, they argue about ticket sales and album sales and streaming sales. It’s actually a _lot_ like Alexis’s tour. The only difference is David’s growing urges to end arguments by slamming Patrick up against the nearest hard surface and shutting him up with his cock.

It’s not until Minneapolis that things get really dire.

🎼

“So who’s my competition for tonight?” Patrick asks, over burgers and beer (for Patrick) and burgers and an acceptable glass of merlot (for David). They have an hour before they need to get to the venue for sound checks; and then another few hours until the show; hopefully David’s ass will have thawed from the truly miserable April howling outside.

He narrows his eyes as he wipes his fingers clean; just because Patrick’s gotten predictable at asking this doesn’t make it less annoying. “Are you going to put this in your rider one day? ‘Must have up-to-date listings of every other act in town, otherwise I’m taking my guitar and ukulele and going home?”

“Don’t forget my banjo,” Patrick says, making a spirited grab for David’s sweet potato fries, but David’s been on the road too fucking long with this asshole and he’s been Alexis’s brother even longer than that, and he swats Patrick’s hand away before he can get anything. “Careful, David, don’t want to damage the talent right before the show.”

“If I wanted to damage you I would’ve stabbed you with a fork, like I did in Vancouver,” he reminds him, pulling out his phone. “Let’s see — some extremely white young men doing some sort of rap retrospective, Shakey Graves at the Armory, The Double-Ds at — oh, wait, that’s a strip show.”

“Still technically competition,” Patrick says, and manages to get a fry. David takes a deep breath and decides to order another glass of wine.

“Rachel Brooks at the stadium,” he continues, “Andy—“

“Rachel Brooks is here?” Patrick says, perking up.

David puts down his phone. “Patrick,” he says very seriously, “This tour has been going fairly well, but I can assure you that we will not be able to secure back stage tickets, I don’t care how big a crush you have on Rachel.”

“I don’t have a crush on her,” he replies, in that twitchy way that makes David think he’s lying. “Besides, didn’t you say big stadium shows usually end earlier than our sets anyway?”

“Oh god, have you actually been listening to what I say?” David says, snagging two of Patrick’s plain potato fries in retaliation. “Heaven forbid.”

“I hang on your every word, David,” Patrick says, and steals another fry.

David really should have known he was being set up.

🎼

David suffers through the sound check and studiously ignores all of Patrick’s loud declarations of “No, I’ve got the amp, really David don’t help” as he sits at the bar and confirms their dates for tomorrow in Madison; it’s going to be a longish drive tomorrow, but after that they’re hitting Madison/Milwaukee/Chicago over the next ten days for a few nights each, which will give him time to get things dry-cleaned before the press through the mid-Atlantic before heading home through Buffalo and Rochester. The chipper woman at the Madison venue sounds excited about Patrick coming; “Apollo” has been playing sporadically on their brand-new alternarock station and David’s got him booked to go on for an interview the morning after tomorrow, which he is absolutely not telling Patrick about because then he’ll be murdered.

He shoots off an email to Stevie and Alexis about the interview and checks Patrick’s Instagram, which Patrick has a very fraught relationship with; most of the content is stuff David’s recorded or taken pictures of, Patrick performing or walking around whatever city they’ve drifted into that night. Patrick asked for the password once and promptly started uploading those weird pictures of motel carpet that he loved taking. David had been about to revoke his access when he saw the truly disturbing number of likes those carpet pictures got.

The latest picture is from their motel that very morning, one of Patrick’s toes just in the the frame. David makes a face and takes a picture of Patrick, onstage frowning over his guitar, playing the first few bars of “Never Gonna Get My Love.” He adds some filters but it doesn’t really need much; there’s something sweet and hopeful there, anticipation in the lines of Patrick’s forearm, the curve of his cheek. No wonder so many of his followers (1300 and climbing) call him a button.

When they reconvene that night, the place is flatteringly close to crowded; he’s able to secure a drink by waving a $20 at the bartender and decamps to the backstage area, where Patrick’s fussing at his phone and looking — weird. “Why do you look weird?” David demands.

Patrick blinks at him. “Hi,” he replies.

“Seriously, are you getting sick or something? You’re not allowed to, we’ve got eight engagements in the next ten days.” He’s aware he should probably feel Patrick’s forehead or something, but he’s also aware that if he gets sick, nobody can drive the fucking car. They’ve already had one unfortunate incident with Patrick and Dayquil on I-90.

“Your concern is touching,” Patrick says, standing up and slipping his phone in his back pocket. “Good out there?” he asks, which is also something he’s taken to saying every time and is also deeply annoying.

“It’s great,” he says, waving it off and almost spilling his drink. “Seriously—“

“Seriously, David,” says Patrick, putting a warm hand on his shoulder and looking up at him with sweet smiling eyes and David just hates him _so much. “_I’m fine. Just relax. You’re going to have fun tonight, I promise.”

“Past experience would indicate otherwise,” David mutters, but he steals Patrick’s seat and pulls out his own phone, in case Patrick’s uploaded another carpet photo.

He hasn’t, so David triple-checks on the bookings for the next two weeks, writes some emails, listens with half an ear to the set; they’ve got it down to a nice half-hour, including whatever godawful song he’s covering tonight (Patrick never tells him in advance, because why would he), and he’s past needing to hold Patrick’s hand through crowd control and the like.

Still, a little over halfway through the set there’s a noise in the crowd that doesn’t die down, not a fight exactly but a — a susurrus, a ripple of something. David slides out through the side door into the main room but he can’t see anything, just like the dozens of people who are _also_ ignoring Patrick up on stage to crane their necks at the back can’t see anything.

Patrick’s just wrapping up “Runaway” when he seems to pick up on the crowd’s divided attention, but he’s just… grinning, like he’s in on some sort of joke, and he clears his throat and says “I would like to dedicate this song to a very special someone in my life.”

David braces himself; the first few bars aren’t terribly familiar, but Patrick’s strummy-strummy-la-la covers usually don’t reveal themselves until at least midway through the first verse. Sure enough, David realizes just as the chorus kicks in: 

_But I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell  
__I know right now you can't tell  
__But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see  
__A different side of me  
__I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired  
__I know right now you don't care  
__But soon enough you're gonna think of me  
__And how I used to be_

He’s about ready to pull the fire alarm, either out of disgust with the song or out of a very real concern about whatever is happening near the door, when the second verse starts — and Patrick’s not singing.

Instead, _Rachel Motherfucking Goddamn Brooks_ is working her way through the crowd, a wireless mic in her hand (and where the fuck had _that_ come from, the asshole manager of this bar had sworn up and down they didn’t have one), singing about how she was talking to herself in public and dodging glances on the train. Patrick gets up from his little stool on stage and she climbs up to sit down on it, beaming like this is some kind of _cute moment _and holy shit, David needs to be recording this, except he left his fucking phone in the back and he’s also too busy have a rage blackout to really do anything more than gape.

An hour later, after the crowd’s gone home and the manager’s thanked David again for the truly spectacular publicity, he manages to get his recording as a thank-you present. “I’m still putting it on our account,” the guy says, his expression still rapt. “But you go ahead and use it however you want. And hey, Patrick Brewer’s got free drinks here for life, okay? That guy’s the best.”

“Oh, sure,” David says, and makes his escape.


	2. Chapter 2

David takes a moment to center himself before going back into the green room. Or he _would_ take a moment, but he’s already getting incoherent text messages from Alexis and he’s going to have a stroke before he ever gets to meet Michelle Obama.

So instead of centering himself, he gets waved through the door by Beefy #2 and confronts the image of Rachel Motherfucking Goddamn Brooks, holding Patrick by the shoulders. There’s a crowd of people David doesn’t recognize that are probably about 1/10th of her entourage, but she’s ignoring all of them in favor of looking Patrick over like a promising Givenchy sweater. “I can’t believe you’re here, Sweet Pea!”

“I can’t believe _you’re_ here,” Patrick replies, a dopey smile that David’s never seen before on his face. “Way to step on my performance, by the way.”

She rolls her eyes. She really is ethereally beautiful, while also having a down-home aw-shucks charm. No wonder half of North America thinks she and TSwift are going to Highlander each other at some point. The other half think they’re secretly dating. “You’re the one who just _DMed_ me out of the blue with that little passive-aggressive ‘oh, this is where I’m playing tonight, gosh it’d be great to see you.’”

“Wait,” David has to interrupt, because he’s still about twenty minutes behind events. “He DMed you?”

They turn toward him, both looking equally surprised that he’s occupying space in the same room as they are. “Oh, uh, David, this is Rachel. Rachel,” Patrick makes a really unnecessary flourish toward him, “This is David Rose.”

“Nice to meet you,” she says. She’s got a solid handshake for someone so tiny.

“Yes, likewise. He DMed you?” He’s not going to get sidetracked, no matter how many albums Patrick’s about to sell as a direct result of whatever the fuck is going on here right now.

“I follow her on twitter,” Patrick answers, eyes bright and guileless and utterly full of shit.

“No, you don’t,” says David, sure of _that_ at least. “Because I run your twitter account.”

“You run my _official_ twitter account,” he corrects.

“Yeah, and he doesn’t follow my ‘official twitter account,’ either,’” Rachel Brooks says, her fingers actually making air quotes.

“Okay.” David tries to form words around what he wants — needs — to know, but he’s acutely aware of Rachel Brooks looking at him with polite expectancy and Patrick favoring him with his least repentant grin, and he is going to be very unhappy in the next twenty seconds. “But why—“

“You didn’t tell him?” Rachel Brooks gasps, smacking Patrick on the shoulder. “Sweet Pea, that’s—“

“Oh my God,” David realizes, “_You’re Sweet Pea_.”

🎼

“Sweet Pea” was the seminal 2006 anthem for everyone who’d suffered at the hands of the Nice Sweet Boy Who Let Them Down Easy. “What couldn’t I do/Couldn’t fall out of love with you” is the preferred shoulder tattoo lyrics for young people thwarted in love, although the last line of the second verse “Our love never died it just passed away” is also a favorite. David listened to any number of Alexis’s exes cry along to the radio while awkwardly driving them home after Alexis dumped them; he was never sure how to explain to them that she was in no way a nice sweet girl who had just let them down easy.

🎼

Their last night on tour is in Rochester, an impressive showing at Anthology with a line that wraps around the block and has Patrick getting a little white-knuckled. “I’m not sure I like the Rachel Brooks Bump,” he says, peering out at the crowd.

“Shouldn’t have dumped her at prom, _Sweet Pea_,” David tells him, and Patrick makes that huffing-laugh noise he always does when he thinks David’s funny but doesn’t want to admit it. “Remember to hold off ‘Apollo’ until at least—“

“Yes, I know, last third of the gig, unless I forget the words to all my other songs. Which hey, could happen, right?” Patrick smiles, wide and extremely annoyed, which is for the best. David’s just got a few more hours of this, and then they can drive home and he can actually sleep in his _own_ bed and not six feet away from the biggest fucking temptation of his life.

Of course, David’s life couldn’t be that easy.

The set itself goes off without a hitch; Patrick’s terrible song selection of the evening is “Private Dancer,” which makes David twitch so hard he almost falls off the stool, but he soldiers through it by changing all of Patrick’s phone alarms to go off at four-thirty in the morning tomorrow. The crowd is happy and singing along with at least a few of the songs; their audiences have been getting more and more dialed in since Madison, since Rachel Brooks and the breathless social media coverage of Patrick Brewer, Long-Lost Sweet Pea Love. It’s almost enough to make David eschew his mouth guard at night.

The problem is that after the set, Patrick doesn’t come back. David realizes this about twenty seconds too late; by the time he’s looked out onto the stage, Patrick’s smiling benignly at some very wide-eyed coeds who are luring him, Siren-like, with their shiny hair and double-fisted drinks. Patrick hops off the stage without so much as a glance back.

Patrick’s already got four empty shot glasses lined up at the bar in front of him when he catches sight of David fighting through the crowd, his smile is a half-second slower, a half-inch looser than it should be. “_David Rose_,” he croons, opening his arms up for a hug. “Congratulations, man! Our first international tour, we did it.”

“Calling it ‘international’ is a bit of a stretch,” David says, but he knows he’s not really giving the snark its due because Patrick is very warm and weirdly _cuddly_, and also those coeds are watching with the same sort of speculation Alexis gets in her eye at a sample sale. “We should head out, we’ve still got to drive home tonight.”

Patrick’s face falls into a parody of disappointment; he’s still hugging David. “Noooo,” he says, “But David _Rose_, there are so many people! Congratulating us! We could just stay here and have a nice night instead. What do you think?”

David thinks he wants to sleep in his own bed tonight, but he also thinks that Patrick’s got the keys and the chance of getting them away from him without at least one more round is vanishingly unlikely. “Fine,” he says, “One more drink but then we _go_.”

Only they don’t. One drink turns into three, at least for Patrick, and by the time David peels him out of his throng of admirers, he’s listing heavily to the left. “Aww,” he protests as David heaves him outside.

“Whatever,” David says, “Keys.” He holds out his hand while maneuvering them toward the car.

There’s an ominous silence, and David turns to look at Patrick, who’s got his brow furrowed. “Uh,” says Patrick, cleverly.

“Patrick,” David says. “Patrick, where are the keys.”

“That is _such_ a good question,” says Patrick.

“Unbelievable,” David hisses.

“You say the sweetest things, David Rose,” Patrick sighs, leaning his chin against David’s shoulder.

So instead of driving the two-plus hours home in relatively light post-midnight traffic, David instead has to book them into the nearest hotel using his own credit card. He manages to get them up to the check-in desk with a minimum of drama; the whole place screams “upper-class locale within which to carry out affairs,” which honestly David’s fine with, as long as he can get his own goddamn room and get away from this drunken asshole who’s got about three hands more than David’s comfortable with, at the moment.

Check-in is painless, but when David finally turns around after offering his credit card, his ID, and a written declaration that in the event he ever has a first-born, the hotel gets to keep it as compensation for any damage done to the rooms, Patrick’s disappeared. “I —where—“

“I think he went to the bar,” says the desk girl, looking like she’s trying not to look like she’s going to tweet about this. “Wasn’t that—“

“No, it wasn’t,” David says, firm.

It’s two in the morning and most of the chairs are up on their tables; there’s a bartender futzing around the bar, a piano player doing his cursory best given the hour, and a couple of groups talking quietly in another corner, but no sign of Patrick.

“Have you seen a drunk guy with a blue shirt, looks like an accountant?” he asks. Four months on the road with him and that’s still the most accurate description he can think up.

The bartender doesn’t say anything, just raises her eyebrows in the direction of the piano player.

Who is Patrick.

Of course.

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough performing tonight?” David says, stomping over to try a little looming intimidation. It hasn’t worked yet but there’s a first time for everything. Patrick’s never gotten drunk after a show and lost their car keys, either, so who knows what the evening will bring.

Patrick looks up at him, all bleary regret, and David’s really got to squash any speculation as to what the evening will bring. “How bad was it?” he asks, plinking out something unfamiliar.

David leans against the piano, rubbing his face. “Not… that bad,” he admits. “You didn’t disgrace yourself in public, or more importantly, me. Although the choice of ‘Private Dancer’ as your cover song for the evening was definitely not my favorite.”

“Thought you might not app—“ Patrick burps, letting it out with a puff of his cheeks; David can smell it from here. “Appreciate that,” he finishes.

“Not as much as I didn’t appreciate you _losing our car keys_ less than three hours from home,” David informs him, slumping a little harder. He’s so tired. He just wants to go upstairs and lock Patrick behind a door and himself behind another door, so he can maybe get some sleep for the first time in months, instead of staring up at a strange ceiling and listening to Patrick breathe and think _I can’t I shouldn’t I want to I won’t_ on an endless loop, the world’s most depressing earworm.

“Sorry, David,” Patrick says, that mocking sing-song he does when he’s not remotely sorry. “But hey, get out your phone.”

David does. “Did the bartender give you the name of a locksmith?”

“Nope. Thought we could take one last stab at an Instastory.” Patrick’s eyes are sparkling, a little red around the edges and David’s really glad he’s going to feel like hell tomorrow. He starts to put his phone away when Patrick puts his hand out, cool fingers on the bones of his wrists, his left hand still playing whatever ambling tune he’s got in his head. “C’mon,” Patrick whispers, “Trust me.”

David turns the video on and starts recording, and Patrick plays some very on-brand and not remotely viral [song about an alcoholic piano](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPPtrqvHGEg), but David dutifully records it and tries not to smile too much, because of course Patrick knows a song about alcoholic pianos, and of course he’d sing it here, alone in a bar with David at two in the morning on the wrong side of the border, drunk and tired and maybe just a little wistful that this is going to be over soon, they’re going to go back to Toronto and Patrick’s going to decline the renewal and go back to his nice tidy accountant life and David’s going to go back to his mad scramble and what they’ll have — what David will have — is this.

The song drifts to a close, and Patrick takes his hands off the keys. “Did you like it?” he asks, quiet and fond.

David stops recording, pushing him over on the bench to sit down. “It was fine,” he said, fussing at the Instagram app. He uploads the video onto Patrick’s account and ignores the press of Patrick’s thigh against his, the sound of his breathing. “Anything you want to say about the last night on tour?” he says, turning to Patrick—

—who is _really_ close, close enough for David to see his brown eyes have just a little bit of green near the pupils. His breath is still incredibly rank. “Anything I want?” Patrick echoes.

“I’ll take that as a no,” David huffs, and bullies Patrick off the bench and out of the bar, into the elevator and up to their rooms. He turns on all the lights in Patrick’s room so he’ll be as unhappy as possible in the morning, tells him in no uncertain terms not to choke on his own vomit in the night, and locks him in. He retreats to the safety of his own room across the hall, locking the door and putting up the chain; for a wild minute he debates putting the desk chair in front, too, but instead he takes a long shower, jerks off, and collapses into bed.

🎼

Patrick doesn’t decline the renewal; instead, he asks David to come to the Recorder.

“Have you been holding out on me, and you’re secretly a millionaire?” David demands after going though an offensive amount of security. “Schitt Records _very_ much cannot afford this, unless you sell about twenty times the number of albums you’ve currently sold.”

The Recorder is one of those institutions David had to learn about when they moved here, the Abbey Road of Toronto where studio space ran into the thousands per hour and there was every conceivable musician more or less on call for sessions and recordings. David’s never so much as set foot in here, but everyone he’s worked with has spoken wistfully of its sound booths and technology and plush couches. Everyone, of course, except Patrick.

“I have been holding out on you,” Patrick admits, opening the door to a control booth jam-fucking-packed with people who look at him the way he used to look at desperate wannabes begging for a spot in his galleries, or the way any music executive has looked at him for the past two-plus years. The warmth of Patrick’s hand at his back keeps him from wanting to bolt, but he can feel his teeth grinding. “So, guys, this is my manager, David Rose. David, you probably don’t need to know anybody’s name.”

“_You_ don’t need to know anybody’s name,” David corrects, but he turns to look at Patrick, for a moment distracted from his more general _what the fuck is going on _to wonder at Patrick, who must know by now—must have guessed—how miserable the music industry really is, how much David is itching to get out and get away from the stink of it. And how nice it feels to be told that this group of assholes don’t matter. “Seriously, what’s going on?”

“David! Hi!” Rachel Brooks emerges from behind some of the assholes, beaming and luminous in a t-shirt and jeans; she holds out her hand and David really hates how much he likes her. “So, Patrick told me that this was a surprise birthday present for you, which seems… really mean, honestly, Patrick, you’re kind of a dick.”

“Oh, good, you knew it was my birthday and made me come to a recording studio for it,” David says, his mouth not fully connected to his brain, apparently.

But Rachel Brooks laughs, even while her assholes look horrified, and Patrick’s hand is still on his back. “Look, me and Patrick were working on this thing and I asked him if he could sing it with me. I know there’s going to be a lot of negotiation back and forth, so I figured, why not make this easy on everybody?” She turns to her legion of assholes. “We’re going to start recording; you guys work with David and figure out the right cut, but I want something worked out by the time we’re done.” She beams at David again. “I’m going to go hassle the producer for a second.”

The assholes start grumbling amongst themselves, and David pulls Patrick aside. “So I’m spending my birthday haranguing a bunch of people I dislike on sight into giving me money,” he clarifies. “This was your big surprise.”

Patrick looks uncertain. “I thought it would beat drinks at Northwood?”

David smiles, because it really, really does. “Patrick, this is the nicest present anyone’s gotten me in a long time.”

🎼

After the single comes out, things start getting _really _out of hand.

It’s good, obviously — Patrick had been charting on Billboard Canada, which is nice, but his strummy-strummy-la-la duet with Rachel Brooks has them hitting the top twenty on the _real_ (read: American) Billboard, which is where you actually make money. David had managed to get Patrick a very good cut, almost a whole percentage of _Thirtysmthg’s_ album sales, plus a last-minute add-on to the back half of Rachel Brooks’s tour. They’re not millionaires by the first week, but they’re not sleeping in the cheap motels anymore. Stevie reports that they’ve actually gotten a Keurig for the office.

Objectively, it’s all going great. But David can’t help but feel like Sandra Bullock in _Speed_, running to catch a bus that’s going to explode any minute.

Rachel Brooks, because she is secretly much, _much _meaner than TSwift (whatever the interviews say), continues to fan the flames. It’s bad enough that they share the mic every time they sing “Our Lingering On” in front of whatever stadium Rachel Brooks has sold out that night, but she’s clearly a shitstirrer. She tells _Rolling Stone_ that Patrick was “the one who got away,” and that they’ll “always be close.” She goes on Fresh Air and talks about her childhood and adolescence and how it was “shaped by the people she loved, who loved her,” and when Terry Gross prompts, “Like Patrick Brewer?” she laughs deprecatingly and agrees.

Patrick is, if anything, _worse_. “It’s such a cliche and I’m aware of that, but breaking up with Rachel hurt me almost as much as it hurt her,” he says on some podcast that interrupts the interview every twenty minutes to advertise Casper mattresses. “We were both so wounded by each other’s absence, you know? But I’m grateful we’ve reconnected. She really has helped me to understand who I am, as an artist and as a man, more than almost anyone else I know.” It’s enraging. David bites through two separate sleep guards that week.

It’s also very, _very _good for business. Stevie sends him an updated sales chart every morning, and for the past couple of weeks it’s been signed with a number of exclamation points, depending on how well either _Songs from a Broken Chair_ or _Thirtysmthg_ is doing. Schitt Records isn’t just in the black, it’s making serious money now, enough to hire assistants, enough to get internship inquiries from people other than Jake’s groupies.

There are also some unexpected side-effects.

“Oh my _god_,” Patrick breathes, scrolling wide-eyed on his phone. They’re camped out in a hotel room in Los Angeles, halfway through an interview marathon; the Grammy nominations just came out and _Thirtysmthg_ has been nominated for Album of the Year, which means people are almost as thirsty for Patrick’s dick as they are for Rachel Brooks’s. Mostly because everyone wants them to confess their big ginger love for each other, if Buzzfeed and Twitter are anything to go by.

David, fussing with the lamps — this is supposed to be interview-only but the last three reporters had whined about a photo, and hotel lighting is a horror but he’s going to do the best he can — says “What?” but doesn’t really mean it, because the last time Patrick said “oh my god” in that tone of voice it had been about some baseball player who used to play on one team but apparently was now going to play on another team and how that was terrible. Patrick doesn’t really have the same sense of urgency as normal people.

“I forwarded you Rachel’s text,” is all Patrick says, which means David has to dig out his phone and check.

It’s a link to some website David’s never heard of; the message is simply “U MADE IT BABEY” and a whole bunch of eggplant emojis, which David is aware doesn’t bode well.

David clicks the link. “This is — what is this,” he says, rather than asks, because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want an actual answer.

Patrick, grinning like the _complete asshole he is_, clears his throat. “‘_Did You Like It_, by revengeisrache. Summary: Patrick Brewer’s life was quiet, simple, and if he always turned up the radio whenever one of Rachel Brooks’s songs came on, who could blame him? Disclaimer,’” he adds and David scrolls down and finds the “Notes” section, following along in mounting bafflement. “‘Obviously this is all made up, I know literally nothing about Patrick Brewer other than a) he grew up on the same street (ROCKBURY AVE 4 LYFE) as Rachel b) was her big high school true love and then c) dumped her their senior year and led her to write the greatest breakup album of all time OH AND d) if the pictures are any indication, he burns if he stands near a spotlight let alone in actual sun. Also Rachel is a lesbian who is going to run off with TSwift any day now, yes I know I know please stop sending me anon hate, this is JUST FOR FUN.’” Patrick squints. "And then there's a smiley face with the tongue sticking out."

David stares at him, waiting for any of this to make sense. “So someone — wrote a story about you two being secret lovers.”

“Well,” Patrick amends, still scrolling, smile broad and delighted, “Apparently we have a lot of sex, and then her evil manager forces us apart, and then I confess my love at—“ he pauses, making a face usually reserved for pictures of puppies or sneezing babies, “The MTV Awards.” He looks up at David, beaming. “It’s pretty sweet.”

“And apparently very sexy,” is all David’s able to get out before there’s a knock on the door and he has to be professional and not a seething mass of elation (he read his share of bandslash in his giddy youth and if someone’s writing fanfic about Patrick that means good things for his growing fanbase), apprehension (if anyone reading or writing it has a serious opinion on who Patrick is dating that might prove awkward once he actually _starts dating_, if he ever bothers to) and a nebulous nervy rage (that he’s not touching with a ten-foot-pole).

The rest of the afternoon is spent in various cars going to various meetings; apparently quite a number of people want to collaborate with Patrick, now that he’s got a Best Song nomination under his belt. But any hope David might have that Patrick forgot about that cursed website is dashed when they wrap up for the day and Patrick pulls out his phone again. “Hey, David,” he says.

“Oh, god,” David realizes. “You found another one.”

Patrick clears his throat. “’Notes: I know this is weird to come into this fandom knowing zero about Rachel Brooks or the great Taychel Debate of 2017, but after listening to all one of Patrick’s albums, I had to try writing something. Also disclaimer: not only is Rachel gay for Taylor but Patrick is _definitely_ gay and running away to the woods with Hozier. He was in the scouts, guys, they'd be very happy.'" He grins at David, all but kicking his feet with glee. "I mean, I _was_ in the scouts. And Hozier's cute."

David wonders what the album sales would look like if Patrick were to suddenly be murdered by a mysterious assassin. "And this doesn't - bother you at all."

Patrick shrugs. "I mean, it's not _me_, you know? They’re writing about a guy who looks like me and has my name but like, it doesn't really have anything to do with me personally. Plus Rachel says if half your audience isn't fantasizing about having sex with you, you're probably doing something wrong."

"I'm gonna go out on a limb and say your audiences aren't like, _exactly_ the same?”

"Are you saying my audiences don't fantasize about me, David?" Patrick asks, cocking his head and leaning back a little in his chair, a challenge and a dare and David's really going to kill him.

“Okay but you’re not actually—“ David tries to convey nonverbally the idea of Patrick and Rachel Brooks rekindling their high school romance, mostly because if he says it out loud he’s going to be putting that into the universe. More into the universe than punkypatrickbrewster, anyway.

Patrick raises his eyebrows, not that you could really notice in this lighting, and gets up from the chair. “Ready to head out?”

Over the next few days, David spends more time than he should on the site Rachel Brooks linked to; it’s research, or social media awareness, or something. There are currently 7,932 stories involving Rachel Brooks and Taylor Swift, with what looks like a strong secondary pairing of Rachel Brooks with one of the Jonas brothers.

There are seven stories featuring “Patrick Brewer (musician),” all of which seem to involve Patrick realizing he was a fool to ever let Rachel Brooks go and making some big, thoroughly embarrassing declaration of love. At the moment, only three of them end with them in each other’s arms; the other four have either TSwift or Interchangeable Jonas coming in to save the day. David feels weirdly bad for fanfic Patrick.

Real Patrick can go die in a fire, however, because he sets David up to get notifications whenever a new story gets posted. It goes from seven to 13 in the next week; the week after that, there are 29. After that, David blocks the notifications.

🎼

There are so many worst parts about having to manage Patrick Brewer — his constant need for tea, his little half-smile which David still has no idea whether it’s laughing at him or with him, the absent-minded guitar strumming while David’s trying to have a conversation — but this might be the worst worst part, which is that Patrick in a tux looks fucking _edible_.

David grits his teeth and says, “Okay, it’s very important that you not screw this up. You go out there, say hi to the very nice, _extremely_ rich people who are going to bid on you, you play the new single with the correct amount of wistful yearning—“

Patrick frowns at that but David’s teeth are probably audibly creaking by now and he wisely stays silent. They’re backstage, which is nothing new, but instead of a concert hall or a music venue they’re in a tiny ballroom at the Hazelton, where a few dozen donors are doing what donors do, which is make up truly ridiculous excuses to give money to causes. The various items up for auction include a Ming vase and that Wu-Tang album that finally got released from the FBI. Patrick is being raffled off as the grand prize.

“—and then they bid, and then I schedule you to have dinner with whatever lucky lady or gentleman has purchased your affections for an evening.”

“Okay, could we make this sound less… prostitute-y?” Patrick says, fussing at the headstock of his guitar.

“Welcome to the music industry,” David huffs. He wants to straighten Patrick’s bowtie, put his hands on his shoulders and tell him to relax. This is awful.

“And when you say ‘extremely rich,’” Patrick says, the question not quite there.

“I mean some of them could probably buy the entire town you grew up in.”

Patrick cocks his head. “So richer than your family was?”

“No,” David says, firm and trying to scowl but failing. Most reminders of what the Rose family had been were painful, or enraging, because they either came from curious idiots or smug assholes. But Patrick talks about it like it’s…just part of the past. Something that happened.

“Well, I guess it’s good you got me at such a bargain price,” Patrick says, just as the very chipper auctioneer announces him.

“Hello, ‘Angels and Demons,’ then shut the hell up,” David hisses as Patrick makes to go out there.

Instead of meekly agreeing, Patrick just smiles some more. “Get out on the floor,” he whispers back. “You know I can’t concentrate if I’m worried you’re going to tackle me from stage left any second.”

David clenches his fists and imagines throwing him off a balcony, or possibly sucking him off on a balcony. It’s hard to say which is more tempting. “Fine,” he says. “_Go.”_

“You first,” Patrick says, gesturing to the door which will lead to a hallway which will lead to another door at the back of the ballroom, because Patrick is the world biggest dickhead. David spins on his heel and marches out, wanting desperately to slam the door behind him; instead he closes it gently and proceeds to run into a small army of waiters swarming the hall. Apparently it’s the cheese course.

He manages to get to the ballroom entrance after nearly getting beaned with a tray full of brie; a security guard is gazing absently at the stage. David is about to show him his pass when he finally hears it.

_“—wish I was in Sherbrooke now!  
_ _For twenty brave men all fishermen who  
_ _Would make for him the Antelope's crew  
_ _God damn them all! I was told  
_ _We'd cruise the seas for American gold  
_ _We'd fire no guns, shed no tears  
_ _But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier  
_ _The last of Barrett's Privateers!”_

“Oh my fucking God, that fucking _asshole_,” David screams very, very quietly. The security guard notices him.

“You know Patrick Brewer?” he asks, looking mildly impressed, which is the first time a security guard has ever looked mildly impressed at him, but David’s too busy having an aneurysm to appreciate it.

“I was his manager up until about five seconds ago,” David says, waving his badge.

The security guard shrugs. “They seem to be into it.”

David takes a moment away from his defenestration plan to notice: Patrick isn’t singing so much as he’s leading the entire roomful of bankers and lawyers and movers and shakers into the next verse. There’s a lot of stomping to the beat, although it’s a bit off-tempo. “How is this happening,” David mutters.

“Didn’t think rich people knew Stan Rogers,” the security guard admits.

“I’m pretty sure they revoke your citizenship if you don’t know the words to this song.” He’d lived nearly his whole life in New York or Long Island or Maui before, the entire expanse of Canada nothing more than a reason to use a different passport when he was feeling whimsical, but he still feels a gut impulse to join in as the room roars into the verse about the slutty Yankee ship.

He installs himself along the back wall, filching a glass of wine and trying not to break it in rage as Patrick finally hits the final chorus and — that fucking pied piper — the entire room lurches to their feet, cheering and clapping and red-faced with patriotism. “Every goddamn time,” he mutters as the cheering dies down and the auctioneer clears her throat.

The bidding is… brisk, he thinks is the right word; a surprising number of people hang on while the price goes from the introductory to the interesting. David sends Stevie a few texts; they’ll have to work out a tasteful way to phrase how high the bidding went in a press release without making it sordid, although there’s a stunning woman in her 40s with a gleam in her eye who he suspects might try for a little sordid if she wins. He glances up to where the auctioneer is buzzing around Patrick like he’s another Ming vase; Patrick is starting to look nervous again. The bidding has gone from interesting to extravagant, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down much.

Before, he could have come in here and named a price so ludicrous that it would have shut the whole room up, ended the party and gotten him what he wanted. Now he just stands here with a drink in one hand and his phone in the other, planning to brag about how much money other people spent. He should go back to the backstage area and wait for this to be over, so that when Patrick wraps up he can kill him for singing Barrett’s fucking Privateers instead of his single and maybe pin him up against a wall.

The bidding’s now mainly between the stunning woman and a cute guy about Patrick’s age, a shy smile that’s at odds with the way his paddle keeps going up. David wonders about the ethics of putting in some bids, just to nudge up the price a little more. With only two left it’s risky, but a late entry can get people panicking and nobody in this room knows who he is; he could bump the price up another twenty or thirty easily, and Patrick would see him and wonder what the fuck he was doing, and David could smile and put in a bid and—

“Sold!” the hammer comes down and there’s some polite clapping; Shy Smile won and Patrick makes his way down the steps to shake hands with the guy. David will need to get his name and information so they can arrange the dinner, make sure he isn’t some sweet-looking serial killer or anything. But Patrick’s already done, working his way through the crowd, pausing for autographs and selfies. He’s getting better at that, the hold-still-and-smile pause that Alexis had drilled into him. He could be good at this, good at being wanted and popular and worth a whole lot of money for just one night.

David had never been good at any of it.

“Before you kill me,” Patrick says as he gets close enough, “I’d like to say—“

“Are you actually going to _apologize_? Because that would be a first,” David says, trying _so hard _to be furious, but Patrick’s smiling with his stupid guitar slung across his back like he’s some troubadour from a romance novel, he’s already pulled off his bowtie and undone his collar like David had known he would, and and he’s ignoring everyone else in order to grin up at him, unrepentant.

“David,” he says, stepping closer and grabbing at his wine glass, which David relinquishes without too much protest, “You should never apologize for Stan Rogers.” And he gulps down the rest of the wine and sets it on the nearest table. “Shall we?”

The security guard gives him a thumbs-up as they pass.


	3. Chapter 3

Rachel Brooks wraps up her tour, inconveniently enough, just when Toronto is at its absolute worst, slush piled up and the air dry and sullen. Theoretically, Patrick could go right back on the road; he was the opening act most nights for Rachel Brooks, and would duet with her an irritating number of times during her set, but he’s probably due for a headlining tour of his own at this point, and they won’t have to play in basement bars or cafes with inadequate sound systems or that goddamn _deli_ that David still has nightmares about.

Patrick, of course, has other ideas. “Can’t we get a vacation?” he asks, his godawful toque jammed down over his ears, an incredibly ugly parka rendering him little more than a marshmallow shape as they scurry toward the St. Lawrence Market.

David tries to remember the last vacation he had. Even before losing everything, he’d never really taken a break from the galleries; what time off he had was devoted to chasing Alexis down from one hostage situation to the next. He didn’t have the work ethic of his father, who’s never taken a day off in his life; but the idea of going somewhere else to be miserable always seemed strange.

“Where would you go?” he asks Patrick, who’s holding the door open for him, instead.

The noise and smells and heat of the market hit him all at once, a physical force that brings him up short. Patrick had insisted they come here for their meeting, with some excuse about shopping. David suspects he just wants David there to hold his upcycled reusable bags while various people ask for selfies.

Sure enough, the rest of their “meeting” goes in about two-minute intervals, in between an assortment of waifish teens and boisterous middle-aged women coming up to Patrick to tell him how much he means to them and/or how hard it was to forgive him for breaking Rachel Brooks’s heart. Patrick treats them all with the friendly good cheer that most Americans probably think is Canadian baseline.

Even without these interruptions, it’s not exactly a productive use of David’s afternoon, watching Patrick purse his lips over artisanal popcorn and raw-milk cheeses. But they manage to talk more about the second album, getting Patrick into the studio soon but not _too_ soon—_Broken Chair_ is still doing brisk business and there’s such a thing as oversaturation. For now they’ll focus on festivals, some invitations and awards ceremonies, and hold their breath to see how much higher this strange balloon can float.

It’s not until they’re about to leave that Patrick says, “I don’t think I’m going anywhere,” with a smile and a red tinge to his cheeks that David can’t pin entirely on the cold.

🎼

And he doesn’t.

Schitt Records now has a collection of nervy, starvling-orphan-type interns and assistants to supervise Patrick while he staycations in Toronto, playing the occasional venue when he feels the urge or sitting in on sessions with other musicians who’ve heard him, heard about him. He gets credits on a handful of albums, ruthlessly negotiated by Alexis who’s turning out to be the most terrifying negotiator they have. Stevie gets him on a few more programs, into a couple of magazines, and the interviewers only ask about Rachel Brooks every other question. Patrick is amused by this, apparently; he forwards David links of every new Patrick/Rachel fanfic, with notes about how their ship is gaining traction and threatening the Taychel juggernaut.

David is — busy. There are a dozen new clients, talent to hand-hold or deliver kindly kicks in the ass. Jake gets caught with a Kardashian which does wonders for his profile, and Ronnie performs in Berlin with Yo-Yo Ma, which startles everyone, especially Ronnie. Ray decides to focus on his real estate and photography businesses, but agrees to stay on retainer for anyone looking for a vibraphonist. David makes sure everyone’s getting what they need if not necessarily what they want, juggling egos and budgets and a ever-present ache at the back of his head every time he wakes up in the morning and remembers that this is his life now.

“You hate this, don’t you,” Patrick observes one day, his chin resting on his palm and his elbow resting on David’s desk. He’d wandered into the offices this morning for some unknown reason while David was wrestling with the accounts, then proceeded to force David bodily out of his chair; for the past three hours he’s been making pained faces at spreadsheets and telling David to get him more tea and/or an actuarial table.

“Hate what? Being a guest in my own office?” He wants it to bite, but he’s spent so little time here — this is the first time he’s come in every day for an entire week since they first landed here in a flurry of outrage and poverty.

“This,” Patrick says, waving his hands around vaguely. “Being a manager, working here, the music industry. You really hate it.”

“We spent almost eight months on the road together, Patrick,” David says slowly. “Was I not clear enough about my feelings?”

That gets Patrick smiling, at least, which David should probably stop aiming for. Just because Patrick’s not in daily arm’s reach anymore doesn’t make him any less dangerous. “I thought it was me,” he says, with that sly smile Annie Leibovitz had managed to catch in the photoshoot a few months ago.

“Oh, I hate you, too,” David assures him. “It’s just… not how I pictured my thirties rolling out.”

“Me, neither,” Patrick says. David looks away from the window; Patrick’s smiling at _him_, which is different than when he’s smiling at other people, and David has to look out the window again. “So what _did_ you picture? For your thirties.”

David didn’t — he hadn’t, really. David’s life has always been one constant roil of the present and the past, scrambling with whatever’s immediately to hand only to watch it slip away into regrets and hollow-gutted humiliations that he replays behind his eyelids for hours every night. He hadn’t ever thought about his thirties, just like he’d never thought about his twenties, just like he probably won’t think about his forties. His imagination doesn’t stretch that way, into a future he could be happy living in.

But Patrick is still looking at him, still smiling, and David says, “Something… quieter. I liked my gallery,” which is true. “Or a store, maybe. Somewhere I could kick people out if they were bothering me. Or had stolen my office.”

“I can’t quite see you working retail,” Patrick murmurs, turning back to the computer.

“Okay, it wouldn’t be _retail_, it’d be… a general store.” David thinks about it. “But also a very specific store.”

Patrick leans his elbow on David’s desk again — both elbows, this time, and he’s still smiling but it’s behind his hand rubbing across his mouth, so David looks out the window as he conjures up a sand and stone branded immersive experience, something that belongs to _him_.

“That’s a good plan,” Patrick says after a while, and now David has to look at him again. “Your business. Very inventive.”

“Yes, well.” David clears his throat. “For now, I’m stuck with you. Unless you’ve found a spare ten million lurking in the account books and we can sell this—“ he waves his hands around, much like Patrick had earlier.

“So you’re going to throw us to the wolves the minute you get a good enough offer,” Patrick says, and he’s not exactly smiling anymore but David never could figure out some of Patrick’s more mercurial moods.

“I hope you weren’t under the impression that any of us are particularly loyal,” David says. “Stevie might stick around, but I think I speak for my entire family when I say we’d all like to go back to what we were good at, which is spending money and having exceptional taste.” Patrick’s expression is still weird, so David asks, “What about you? Don’t tell me _you_ hate it.”

“What, balancing my manager’s accounts? By the way, you need to have a talk with your mother about her budget, it’s… disproportionate, I think is the best term for it.”

“The music industry,” David clarifies. “Being a pop star, the glamor and glitz and all the rest of it.”

Patrick makes a big production out of looking around David’s office, which is nicely appointed but perhaps lacking in glitz. Then he shrugs, the question seeming to land and unsettle him. “I — don’t know,” he admits, pushing away from the desk a little, staring out David’s window. “It’s nice. It’s kind of fun, at times. And hey, if I ever do get sick of it,” he gestures to David’s computer, “You guys can always hire me as your accountant. Because you really, _really_ need one.”

🎼

Through some combination of magic and Stevie — “I’m hoping I had something to do with it,” Patrick says mildly when David finally gets hold of him, words tumbling out like so many dropped cards — Patrick gets invited to play at SXSW. On the outdoor stage, which is better than David expected; it’s an early set but it’s progress. There’s been buzz about a long-shot nomination for Best New Artist, which he’s been encouraging as much as humanly possible between managing the growing talent pool and managing Patrick, who still wears his shitty Costco jeans — “I put you down on my card, if you want to go sometime,” Patrick’s eyes big and brown and totally fucking with him — and brings the fringed vest to use as a threat if David gets too bossy.

“I’m _supposed_ to be bossy,” David protests as they land in Austin, the heat pushing up through the tarmac. “I’m _your boss._”

Patrick shakes his head as he signs someone’s baggage claim ticket, smiling into a selfie before turning back to David. “Do I need to get you another copy of _The Rights of Man_?”

Patrick plays the latest single, a few others they’re hoping to push in the next few months, and [some song about tractors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGkseGFQLh4) that David’s never heard of but the crowd seems to love. People come up to David to leave a number, talk over collaborations, get some small piece of Patrick that they can use. David’s still a neophyte in this industry, compared to Stevie, but this part is very familiar.

By the time Patrick’s done signing and selfie-ing and listening to earnest infants tell him how much they love him, David’s vacillating between pride and a strange sort of apprehension. Patrick Brewer is _someone_, now, someone that tiny children adore and that security guards recognize and that festivals invite to play and he’ll keep being more and more of a someone, until he’s too much of a someone for David to hold onto. And that was the _plan_, that’s what everyone agreed on going into this. The Roses sell the company and get back to some semblance of their old life, everyone goes their separate ways. This is exactly what David wants.

This is exactly what David used to want.

They end up at a bar next to the hotel they’re staying at, one of those basement-type claustrophobic affairs with sports on every flatscreen and flatscreens on every wall, the boisterous throng utterly uninterested in Patrick Brewer, come down to drink amongst them. “Reminds me of the Glockenspiel,” Patrick says, sliding onto a stool.

“The what now,” David says, sitting next to him.

Patrick smiles. “The bar where we met, remember? The open mic night.”

“Oh god, that place had a name?”

Patrick laughs.

The bar is crowded with people glued to one sports screen or another, and the bartender looks like she’d rather be killing a deer with her bare hands than serving them, but she gives Patrick some local brew and David an Italian soda with minimal glaring. Patrick notices the drink and his eyes narrow, but he just talks about the lineup for tomorrow, playing at a smaller venue before heading home the day after.

The conversation meanders, like most conversations with Patrick do; there’s another argument about the merits of baseball, because Patrick’s love is deeply nerdy but also weirdly sentimental and he’s convinced somehow that if only David sits in the bleachers for himself, he’ll become some sort of convert. This devolves into a discussion of the seventh-inning stretch, which David insists sounds dirty and Patrick insists is because David’s deeply disturbed. Stevie’s new boyfriend comes up and they agree that he’s not good enough for her, although David thinks that’s mostly because no music critic is good enough for anyone and Patrick seems to think it’s because he’s not attentive enough to what she wants.

“If I let _that_ kind of thing stop me from dating, I’d still be a virgin,” David says, signaling for another soda.

Patrick snorts, then hiccups and blinks. “I think I’m drunk,” he says, thoughtfully.

David frowns as he does the math. “You’ve only had—“ a thought occurs to him. “Patrick. Did you _eat_ anything today?”

Patrick’s blush makes David very happy that he’s stone-cold sober, because otherwise this night would end badly. “I definitely thought about it.”

“This is why I can’t leave you alone for a minute,” David mutters, and waves at the bartender. “Hi! Yeah, do you sell food of any kind? A burger or some sort of grilled cheese situation?”

The bartender looks like she’s fantasizing about gutting that deer. Or possibly him. “We’ve got pretzels.”

“Great. We’ll take some.” He tries smiling at her but she’s too terrifying to make it convincing, so he ends up kind of grimacing as she trundles off. Next to him, Patrick is laughing.

“Never knew I’d cause you this much grief, did you?” he says, leaning his head on his hand, half-sprawled out on the bar. They should’ve gotten him drunk for the last photoshoot, had him lean against a bar or a pool table, loose and smiling with that flush spreading down his neck.

“Oh, I did,” David says instead of saying any of that. “That’s why I didn’t want to sign you in the first place.”

Patrick’s jaw drops, outrage in every curve of him. “You _what_?”

David shrugs and takes a sip of his soda. “Stevie talked me into it. I thought anyone who drank Red Mountain wasn’t going to be worth the hassle.”

Patrick laughs again. “Little did you know.” He looks around, although he doesn’t seem to be taking in the depressing, dingy decor. “It’s funny, you know. I wake up and keep expecting today to be the day where it’ll get… interesting.”

“‘Interesting’?” David echoes.

“Not interesting,” Patrick amends, patting his elbow in drunken apology. “I mean it’s just — I like it, you know? I like the gigs and collaborating with other people, and this beats my old office any day of the week. I guess it just doesn’t feel… like anything’s happening.” Patrick shrugs and takes another drink.

David squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to watch Patrick fellate a bottle. “You just performed on the main stage at _Southby_,” he says. “Last week we shot a music video with Zia Anger. A half-dozen different girls asked you to sign their breasts tonight. Things are happening—“

“I know,” Patrick says, putting his hand on David’s wrist this time. “‘m sorry, I don’t mean — I’m grateful, David. Really.”

It would be a spectacularly bad idea to ask him _how_ grateful, and in what ways he’d be willing to express that gratitude. “You’re welcome,” he says instead, trying to sound flippant and failing miserably.

Patrick is still touching his wrist; he turns David’s hand over, palm up, and runs his fingers across his lifeline.

“Have you been taking palm-reading classes from Twyla?” David says, too high-pitched. He tries pulling away but Patrick pulls back, his brow furrowed in concentration as he slowly spins one of David’s rings, the one David perches on the second knuckle of his middle finger whenever he has to go on tour with Patrick.

“It’s so strange,” Patrick says. The callouses on his fingers catch on David’s skin. “You do all this work — I see you working, all the time — but you’ve got the softest hands I’ve ever seen. Even though they’re strong and really big. You have big hands. And strong. But really soft. Do you put something on them?”

“Um,” David replies, cleverly.

The pretzels arrive with a clatter. “I’ll put it on your tab,” the terrifying bartender says and leaves.

“You should eat these,” David says, trying once more to get his hand back. Patrick makes a very unsettling pouty face and holds tighter. “Patrick—“

“David,” he replies, voice low and those big eyes looking at him and David hates everything about his life, every individual thing.

“Patrick,” he repeats, and God knows what he’s about to say but fortunately he’s interrupted by shouting and shattered glass and a very large man slamming into his side. “_Excuse_ me,” he yelps, shoving him off as much as he’s able, which isn’t much — the very large man is indeed very large, and very angry about something, and very clearly very drunk.

“Excuse _me_?” Very Large Man says, steading himself on the bar and squinting balefully up at David. “Excuse _you_, I’ll fucking—“

David’s really not at all clear how he manages to dodge the fist (more like a paw, really) that comes hurtling toward him; a childhood of grim practice, most likely. But then something far, far worse happens — worse than David getting punched, worse than anything David had imagined could happen tonight:

Patrick stands up and says, “Excuse _me_.”

🎼

“Unbelievable,” David hisses, dragging Patrick off the elevator and down the hallway — they made a clean getaway from the bar and dashed into the hotel with a minimum of witnesses, but trust David to have the kind of luck where some instagram model is lurking outside Patrick’s door and gets all of this on video.

But there’s no one, and he manages to get the door to Patrick’s room open and slammed shut behind him, safe in the air-conditioned dark. He lets himself have one single, solitary moment of relief before he hauls Patrick into the bathroom to slap the lights on and assess the damage.

“Ow,” Patrick offers, squinting in the fluorescence.

“Good,” David snaps, not entirely coherent. He crowds Patrick up onto the counter, running a washcloth under the tap and wringing it out. “You’re cut off from alcohol from now on, I’m putting it in your contract. I hope this hurts.”

“It really does,” says Patrick, wincing as David puts the washcloth on his eye.

“You have to be onstage in less than twenty-four hours and you have a _black eye_,” David informs him. “What the hell were you thinking back there?”

“I mostly was thinking that if I didn’t do something, he was going to try to hit you again, and I didn’t want to fly home with your corpse.” Patrick sounds equal parts annoyed and amused, which is business as usual. “Besides, you should really be more worried about my hand.”

“Oh, God, what did you do to your hand?” David demands, grabbing it and running his thumb over the knuckles — they’re red and they look a little swollen, but Patrick flexes his fingers and curls them around David’s wrist.

“I’m fine,” Patrick says, and David looks up from his hand to his face — his kind, pale, accountant-with-a-heart-of-gold face, his left eye already a little closed up — and there’s only so much David should be expected to take.

Patrick kisses in three-fourths time, a steady rhythm as he pulls away only to kiss David again, sweet open kisses that trail off his mouth and along his jaw, down his neck as David stands there in the bracket of Patrick’s thighs. “I,” David starts, and doesn’t know how to stop. “Patrick.”

“You keep saying my name,” Patrick mumbles against his collarbone, teeth and lips and warm breath. “I like it.”

David likes it too, likes the feel of Patrick’s stubble along his throat and the way his legs curl around David’s hips. He likes Patrick’s mouth and hands and smile and this is so, so unfair.

“You’re drunk,” David reminds them both, and pulls away, Patrick’s ankles knocking against the back of his knees. “And I’m… you need to sleep it off, and tomorrow we’ll see if we can find some concealer in your shade, and then after your set we can…”

“We can what?” Patrick says, still too close, and David kisses him again, just once.

“We can… talk,” he says.

Patrick smiles at him, that smile that’s for _him_, how had David missed that? “Oh, you want to talk. Okay.”

“I’m leaving,” David announces. “Keep the washcloth on your face. And drink some water. And don’t throw up and then choke to death on your own vomit, please.”

“Cross my heart,” Patrick promises, reeling David in when he tries to make his escape for one last kiss. “For the road,” he murmurs, and David twists out of his grip before he does anything dumber than what he’s planning to do tomorrow.

🎼

Sleep doesn’t seem likely after that, but David closes his eyes and opens them to daylight pouring in through the window and his phone shrilling at him. He flails around for it; Alexis.

He manages to answer, flopping back down onto bed. “Is someone dead? Please tell me someone’s dead.”

“I was hoping _you_ were, considering I’ve been calling every fifteen minutes for _two hours_,” she huffs at him.

“No luck so far,” he groans. He didn’t even _drink_ last night, and here he is feeling hungover and scratchy-eyed. “What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty,” she says, which means it’s only seven-thirty his time.

“Alexis, seriously, unless someone is actually dead—“

“Check twitter.”

David swears, because he knows exactly what’s coming.

🎼

It’s blurry, and whoever shot it couldn’t remember from one moment to the next if they were holding their camera in portrait or landscape mode. But it’s definitely the Very Large Man from last night, trying to hit David; and that’s also definitely Patrick, all five-foot-eight of him getting up from his stool and saying “Excuse _me_,” and getting jabbed in the face, only to return fire with a hearty fist to the Very Large Man’s stomach.

It’s got 40,000 views from the original poster; Rachel Brooks, goddamn her to hell, had retweeted it with the addition of 😮😤🤜👀#SweetPeaNotSoSweet. David has never longed more for death.

🎼

“Okay, so we can’t just tweet ‘who else wants some,’ Stevie, because first of all, we’re in Texas, and there _will be takers_,” David is very calmly shrieking into his phone, where Stevie and Alexis have trapped him in three-way conference call hell. He’s got his laptop open on the bed and he’s double-fisting it with his iPad, scrolling through various social media platforms to try to get more information. “Also, I have a feeling we’ll be hearing from the _police_ soon about it so while adopting a pugilistic attitude may get us a bump in sales, it’s also likely to get Patrick _arrested_.”

There’s a faint knocking at the door, and David can only hope it’s the maid or room service or an assassin, but when he throws it open it’s Patrick, looking clean and washed and like he got punched in the face last night.

“_You_,” David hisses, and yanks him inside, still trying to get a word in edgewise between Alexis and Stevie and Dad, who’s apparently joined them all for this lovely family conference call. Thank God it’s too early for Mom to be up.

“Um,” Patrick replies, “Me?”

“Sit there and don’t hit anyone,” David points at the least comfortable chair before returning to his bed, where his laptop is dinging very irritatingly that he has three new messages from that dyspeptic hemorrhoid on the Southby PR team who’s at least having a worse morning than David. “There’s _video _of your gallant dumbassery from last night and I’m trying to make sure you don’t get thrown in Texas prison which, I assure you, is worse than regular prison.”

“I don’t think I’m going to prison, David,” Patrick says, setting down a pink box on the desk and leaning up against it with his arms crossed. “I brought you a present.”

“Thank you,” David mutters, because he was raised at least half-Canadian, but Dad chooses that moment to ask if David can schedule an interview on a local morning news program because he’s 73 years old and also terrible at this. Who knew David would ever be _thankful _for that Public Relations course Alexis took, because he can let her chew him out and instead get up to try poking at the coffee machine.

Patrick silently comes over and takes the pot away into the bathroom to fill it with water. David wants desperately to say something about how he prefers filtered, just to be an asshole, just to see Patrick smile at him being an asshole—because they kissed last night, they kissed even though Patrick had a black eye and David was being an asshole about it and apparently that’s something Patrick actually _likes_, and yes this might be wildly unprofessional but David can feel the tug of a smile on his face, despite the argument happening in his ear.

But then Patrick comes back out and David thinks, _black eye_, and he thinks, _doughnuts_, and he hangs up the phone. “Where did that box come from?” he asks, going for super-casual and probably not landing if Patrick’s nonexistent eyebrows are anything to go by.

“Voodoo Doughnuts,” he answers, which sends David into a full-body cringe. Oh God.

“So ,you were outside, this morning.”

“…Yes?” Patrick says, slow, still holding the pot full of water.

David takes it from him and pours it into the coffeemaker; if he’s going to have to murder Patrick he’ll need the caffeine. “So you were outside, with that black eye, and I’m guessing that because you’re… you,” he lands on, because giving Patrick a compliment right now probably isn’t going keep them on track, “That whoever might have asked for a photo or anything—“

“A few people,” says Patrick, shrugging, his hands now jammed into his pockets. “I was kind of surprised at the crowd, honestly, but apparently the place is open 24 hours.”

“Oh, so there was a _crowd_,” David says. “That’s—that’s great.”

“I’m sensing sarcasm,” Patrick says, solemn.

“Honestly, the only good thing about this whole situation is that it finally got you—us—okay, you know what, I’m having a crisis, so stop smiling at me, okay?” David has the sense he’s not sounding irritable so much as pleading, because Patrick comes closer.

“Doesn’t sound like a crisis,” says Patrick, even as he puts his hands on David’s waist. “Sounds like you’re complaining.”

“I can’t believe you’re not even hungover,” David mutters. He clearly isn’t, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and smiling so softly.

“Well, I took a jog around Lady Bird Lake at dawn, so,” he says, which almost sends David into another spiral but fortunately Patrick kisses him just then and everything in David’s brain goes quiet for a few seconds.

But then his computer pings _again_, and his phone buzzes with Alexis’s face bright on the screen, and David lets his forehead rest on Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick has really nice shoulders. “At least nobody’s found the Very Large Man yet,” he sighs. “Although with my luck he’s probably at the police station getting like, a posse together or something.” He tries waving his hands to encompass the idea of a posse, which he really only knows is tangentially related to law enforcement since mostly he remembers it in conjunction with Leonardo.

Patrick catches his hands and interlaces their fingers. “He’s not at the police station,” he murmurs, warm and fond in David’s ear.

David looks up at him and there’s something in his expression that instantly makes David wary. He’s seen that look before. “How do you know that,” he doesn’t-ask.

“Because I ran into him at Voodoo Doughnuts,” Patrick says, tipping his chin up for another kiss.

David pulls back. “You _what_?”

Patrick grins and goes for his neck, which is cheating. “Somebody recognized me and asked if I’d really punched some guy named Burnie last night, and I said I didn’t get his name but it was very possible, and he called the guy and he came down to the shop. Turns out he was a little drunk—“

“Imagine that,” David mutters, wishing he could focus on what Patrick’s saying and not the feel of his teeth. This is probably important.

“—and he felt really bad about it. Apparently he’s working on some ‘stuff.’ He even offered to bring me on his podcast.” Patrick lets go of David’s hands to slide his arms around David’s waist. “I said I’d need to ask my manager first.”

“Okay, I’m not your _mom_, you don’t need my _permission—“_

“You’ve spent the past ten months trying to convince me that I _do_,” Patrick protests.

“Well, that’s before I trusted your judgement!” David flicks some lint off of Patrick’s shoulders.

Patrick’s eyes light up and David’s made a horrible mistake. “You trust my judgement?”

“You should know that your voice went really high just then, and you should be embarrassed,” David informs him.

“I am,” Patrick promises, and kisses him again. Some more.

🎼

David’s prevented from expressing either his appreciation to Patrick for having solved their problems or his irritation at Patrick for having created their problems by Alexis, calling back once again with the news that some video game type person had just gone on Twitter to confess his misdeeds.

“Yeah, way ahead of you,” David snaps. “Patrick already—“

“Yes, I see the _selfie_ he got with Patrick that you _neglected _to have him send to me first for some photoshopping because, Patrick? Sweetie?” She yells loudly enough for David to give up and put her on speaker. “Next time you think a pic might go viral can you have me put some filters on it first? You’re looking really pale.”

“He _is_ really pale,” says David. Patrick, who is now sprawled next to him with those horrible shoes on the covers, laughs at him. David scrambles off the bed with his laptop because he really cannot get distracted until he’s done with this.

Except by the time Alexis (and Stevie, and Dad, and _Mom_ who’s wandered in with some very firm opinions about what the “Bookface announcement” should say) signs off, it’s time for them to go over to this Bernie or Burnsie’s office all the way up north of the city, which means instead of tackling Patrick down into the sheets (which is what he wants to do) or being emotionally mature and having the talk that they need to have before undertaking any shenanigans (which is what he recognizes he should do) he has to bully Patrick off the bed and out of the hotel room and into the parking lot and into the passenger seat of their thoroughly unimpressive Nisan to argue with both Patrick and the built-in GPS about how best to avoid I-35 (which he absolutely does not want to do).

Still, the podcast episode goes without a hitch, despite the frankly baffling cast of characters that apparently populate it, including a British guy who keeps asking Patrick to hit the host again so he can film it. David negotiates a thumbs-up to the final edit before it goes up, as well as notification for any soundbites that get released early, which Stevie will probably hate him for but it can’t be helped. Burnie is suitably contrite for trying to murder David last night, and in the light of day he’s a lot less intimidating, but David keeps a casual distance that Patrick makes fun of him for all the way back to the hotel.

“I’m just saying, I don’t think you were in imminent danger,” Patrick says, leaning back in his seat and staring a hole in the side of David’s face.

“Stop that, I’m driving,” David says.

He’s said it a hundred times before, on those long stretches of road while Patrick _should_ have been sleeping and was instead watching him drive. It makes something clench in his stomach, the thought, the possibility that Patrick might have wanted this, wanted _him_, even back then, even when he was cheerfully making David’s life a chaotic maddening joyful mess. It’s thrilling, and it’s terrifying, and it’s just a little bit awful.

Patrick smiles, and doesn’t obey, just like he never has before. “I’m not doing anything.” That’s familiar, too.

“Have you—“ David clears his throat. “Okay, so. We’ve got…” he looks at the clock on dashboard and makes a face, “Forty-five minutes before we need to get to Radio, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for talking, but we probably should. You know. Talk.”

There’s no answer right away and David risks his life in the middle of Lamar traffic to glance over: Patrick looks nervous, which is honestly kind of nice to see. “Yeah,” he breathes, and rubs his thumb along his jaw. “Um. Okay. Last night—I’ve never done that. Before.”

“I’d _hope_ not,” David says. “Isn’t there some Heritage Minutes thing about how violence is never the answer?”

Patrick laughs, an abrupt thing that sounds as surprised as amused, and David risks another look; Patrick’s smiling at him. “No,” he says, “I meant—kissing you. Kissing a guy.”

“Oh.” David waits for the knot of dread, because he’s had _this_ conversation—_I’m not like that, it was a mistake, you tricked me into it_—but the knot doesn’t come, there’s no dread because Patrick’s still smiling at him. It’s a good thing they’re at a red light, because David doesn’t want to look away. “Okay.”

“But I want to,” Patrick says, and fucking green lights ought to be banned, along with car horns and cars in general. “I want to, with you. If you—if that’s something you want.”

“I—yes,” David says, and there’s the hotel, thank God. “I do. In case me kissing you back wasn’t making it obvious.”

“Hey, I thought I was being pretty obvious myself, I had to suffer _bodily injury_ to finally get you onboard,” Patrick teases as David maneuvers them into a parking space and turns off the car. It’s suddenly very quiet and David wants to—

“One thing,” he says, to himself as much as to Patrick, “I think—okay, Patchel stans aside, I think we should keep this… if you want to have a… I don’t—“ This is ridiculous, David’s negotiated a hundred different business agreements for Patrick and about a thousand romantic or sexual agreements for himself, but this is leaving him tongue-tied, this simple thing.

Patrick nods, as if David said something actually coherent. “Keep it between us, you mean.”

“Not—I’m not saying because I’m a man, or because someone’s going to spit on me for breaking you and Rachel up or something, although that _is_ going to happen and I _will _be upset about it, for the record,” David says, the words tripping out, “I’m just saying, this is new and we should take things—slow.”

“Slow,” Patrick echoes. “I—yeah, I think you’re right.” He’d stopped smiling for a minute, but David looks up at him and it’s back, a small quiet thing at the edge of his lips, in the slight wiggle of his ears. “I mean, half the time you don’t even like me, so.”

“It’s _way_ more than half the time,” David protests, his own grin spreading over his face and he wants to kiss him, so badly, but between the traffic and this incredibly painful wonderful conversation he’s got to start the car again to get them down to Radio for Patrick’s set.

“Noted,” Patrick says, and puts his hand on David’s knee.


	4. Chapter 4

Patrick takes David at his word in regards to taking things slow, which David at first appreciates, then regrets, then begins to suspect is just another sign from God that David’s life is going to be forever wretched.

Part of the issue—most of the issue—is sheer lack of opportunity. After SXSW, Patrick goes back out on the road, this time to some of the European festivals that start popping up in the spring. Alexis, who speaks seventeen languages and has at least one ex-boyfriend in every major port of call, gets tasked with escorting Patrick around Berlin, Dublin, Lisbon and Madrid for three weeks; meanwhile David has the dubious honor of going to a lot of very, very bad comedy shows, because Dad thinks they ought to branch out.

“Branch out from _what_?” David demands, even while he’s being herded out the door to attend some show at a bar with a name even more offensive than Glockenspiel. “We have a concert pianist, a very terrible rock star wannabe—“

“Hey, now, Jake is doing very well for us,” Dad protests.

“—a handful of moderately not-unpromising singer-songwriters, and Patrick. Our brand seems to mostly be ‘smartasses with varying degrees of talent.’”

“So find us someone who’s not a smartass, David,” Dad tells him, and shuts the office door in his face.

In retaliation, David signs Ted Mullins, who could never in his life be a smartass because he’s too busy either being earnest about animal welfare or making really awful puns. It’s a mystery why his sets are such a success but David’s got the ticket sales to wave in his parents’ face.

“I’ve seen his picture,” Patrick says, his voice warm against David’s ear even as it seems to stretch and distort with the four thousand miles between them. “I think we both know why his sets are such a success.”

“Okay, Toronto might not be New York or LA, but there _are_ attractive people here,” David says, “And Ted’s—“

“Attractive?” Patrick supplies.

David tries not to smile, then remembers Patrick can’t see him. “I’m sorry, are you _jealous_?”

“No,” says Patrick, and David wonders if Patrick’s trying not to smile, either.

“Unconvincing.”

“I’m just glad we’re coming home in a few days.”

“Still plenty of time for Ted and me to get into a bar brawl and for him to defend my honor,” David muses, “Which would necessitate me tending to his wounds—“

“Goodnight, David,” Patrick harrumphs and hangs up on him, which is honestly the best part of David’s day.

But when Patrick finally does get back, David’s treated to a very comprehensive kiss in the one corner of his office that isn’t made up of glass walls—and that’s it. “Wait, no,” David protests when Patrick steps back.

“Slow, remember?” Patrick murmurs, his nose just a little sunburned from that outdoor concert in Milan the day before yesterday.

“I _knew_ I should have seduced Ted,” David mutters, and Patrick laughs at him but _does_ crowd him back up into the corner for a few more minutes, which is nice.

Even with them both in the same city, though, there are logistical issues: Patrick’s living with Ray in that ridiculous walkup on Dufferin, and while David’s brave enough to risk the throngs of students who instagram Patrick’s every move outside his building, he’s not brave enough to risk Ray, who keeps trying to interest David in one of his various business ventures. David lasts exactly one evening trapped on Ray’s couch listening to a pitch for a yacht timeshare before nixing any and all hanky-panky at Patrick’s place.

“Hanky what now?” Patrick demands, lacing his fingers behind the small of David’s back as he leans against his bedroom door, tugging David closer for a kiss.

David’s about to explain when the door opens a fraction of an inch before getting blocked by Patrick’s shoulder. “Oh!” says Ray from behind the door. “Patrick?”

_Really_? David mouths, horrified, because they’d escaped to Patrick’s room for a _reason_.

“Yes, Ray?” Patrick says, grinning up at David.

“I wanted to know if you or David wanted some ice cream. I got Chubby Hubby the other day!”

“I think we’re good for now,” Patrick says, and proceeds to cackle like a loon at David’s inner turmoil.

“I really _like_ Chubby Hubby, though,” David explains later, full of ice cream and kissing down Patrick’s neck.

“And I would really like to get you behind a door with a _lock_,” Patrick harrumphs.

David’s place is similarly out of the question; he’s still sharing a one-and-a-half-bedroom with Alexis, and there’s nothing David wants less than to have his sister walk in on him with someone. Again.

“‘Again,’ huh,” Patrick says, looking around the apartment, his eyebrows raised at the sweaters neatly stacked in the kitchen cupboards.

“I thought you weren’t the jealous type,” David says. Alexis is going to be home any minute, so this business meeting has to stay business.

“I never used to be,” Patrick confesses, breezy, honest, and David can hardly be blamed for the thoroughly businesslike hickey he gives Patrick, pinned up against the counter.

🎼

Still, by the time Coachella rolls around (Patrick’s name unfortunately in the smallest font, which David fought for three weeks before conceding defeat beneath the pitiless gaze of Shiela from Goldenvoice), they haven’t noticeably sped up past hands-above-the-belt makeout sessions.

“I mean, I’m not _complaining_,” David says, trying to remember what else he needs from the office to shove into his already overstuffed carryon.

Stevie, her feet propped up on his desk and frowning down at something in her hand, says, “You’re complaining right now. This is you, complaining.”

“Okay, I’m complaining, but not about _Patrick_.”

“Isn’t Patrick the guy you’re not fucking? Who you want to fuck?” At last she puts her Tamagochi away and actually looks at him. “Who, by the way, I checked the contracts and I’m pretty sure you’re not _supposed_ to fuck?”

“I’m pretty sure my dad isn’t going to fire me for falling in… to, into, a relationship, with someone I like very much,” David says, veering away from whatever declaration he was in no way making.

Stevie’s expression indicates that he didn’t veer all that well. “Okay,” she says, and stands up. “Then I guess you don’t want my ‘Congratulations on landing a Coachella slot’ present?”

“Yes I do want a present,” David corrects her, and she wordlessly hands him a neatly wrapped box that’s suspiciously light.

“Don’t open it until you’re on the plane,” she instructs him, which means he opens it in the Uber on the way to pick up Patrick before heading to the airport.

The black box is honestly kind of classy, with embossed gold lettering on the front. Unfortunately, the gold lettering says “TROJAN MAGNUM LARGE SIZED CONDOMS LUBRICATED” and a bunch of other words at the bottom that David doesn’t see because he’s too busy stuffing the whole thing into the very bottom of his bag and swearing as he looks for his phone to text Stevie a litany of threats she knows he’ll never actually follow through on.

**learn to take a compliment jeez,** she texts back. **I could’ve been a REAL asshole and gotten Snug Fit**

🎼

Before they’d lost everything, David had gone to Coachella as a matter of course; his assistant would get hotel rooms for him and whoever his best friends that month were. He’d spend most of the two weeks listening to music he didn’t like all that much, taking drugs he didn’t like that much, talking to people he didn’t like that much. It wasn’t something he enjoyed; it was just something you did.

This time there’s no drugs, only one hotel room, and his best friend texts **that was the other half of my present, Happy Bone Him Already Day** when he demands an explanation for said one hotel room.

Patrick looks more amused than outraged. “At least there are two beds,” he points out, putting his guitar gently down on one of them.

“Oh, yes, that’s just — perfect,” David mutters, dumping his bags onto the other. He’s about to text Stevie she’s fired regardless of what Dad says when he feels Patrick’s hands at his waist, turning him gently around. “If you’re going to try to kiss me out of a bad mood,” he warns, “I should tell you that it will probably work but that I’ll be even madder later that it worked and enact some form of revenge.”

“Revenge, I like the sound of that,” Patrick says, delighted, and plucks David’s phone out of his hand to toss it on the bed.

The thing is, David’s never been in this situation before. People don’t go slow with him; he’s not someone anyone’s ever thought was worth the time. Patrick’s the first — the only — one who’s ever waited, who’s been happy to take his time.

But he doesn’t seem all that interested in going slow at the moment; he pushes David down onto the bed and climbs on top of him with a giddy eagerness that makes David’s heart catch in his throat. “So what does it entail, exactly,” he murmurs, leaning down to nibble at David’s jaw.

“What?” David’s not proud of the fact that he’s lost track of the conversation, but kissing Patrick is distracting. Almost as distracting as running his hands down Patrick’s back, along the curve of his nicely solid ass, down his thick thighs.

“Your revenge,” Patrick says, patient against the hollow of David’s neck. “For kissing you out of your bad mood.”

“You haven’t actually done that yet,” David reminds him, and brings his hands up to angle Patrick’s head a little better.

When he pulls back, Patrick’s nicely dazed. “What?” he says, a little breathless.

David laughs just as his phone starts screeching from the foot of the bed. He picks it up, ignoring Patrick’s narrowed eyes, because he knows what that noise means — he’d set it himself less than an hour ago, in case of exactly this. “We’ve got forty-five minutes to get down to your venue and do a soundcheck,” he tells Patrick, waggling the phone’s screen that says ‘COACHELLA SOUND CHECK STOP MAKEOUTS’ at him. “So whatever whips and chains you’re fantasizing about will have to be put on hold.”

“If you have whips and chains, that explains the amount of luggage you brought,” Patrick says, but climbs off of him.

🎼

Soundcheck is fine, but Patrick insists on staying for the sound checks of the two subsequent acts. “It’s good manners to support who you’re opening for,” he says, which would be fine normally — but he manages to say it within hearing distance of Ben and Carly, who immediately come over to placate his ego. This somehow devolves into the most strummy-strummy-la-la jam session that David’s ever been subjected to and lasts until Patrick actually has to go onstage and sing at people who have paid for the privilege.

“Of which I can’t believe there are more than like, three,” David mutters, herding him back out toward the stage.

“As a manager whose job it is to instill confidence in me,” Patrick tells him, “I’d like to submit some comment cards.”

The set goes over big — the second single just dropped a few weeks ago and David can see people in the front row mouthing along to “_but tomorrow's a whole other town_” — and he manages to relax enough to check his phone, organize a couple of interviews for tomorrow and maybe a quick trip to that Oaxacan place David loves.

This is, of course, a mistake.

“I would like to dedicate this song,” he hears Patrick say into the mic, over the resulting screams, “To someone very special in my life — and also to Carly Rae Jepson, who double-dog-dared me.”

David whispers, “You _fucker_,” as Patrick strums some acoustic nonsense before the verse.

_I really wanna stop but I just got the taste for it  
_ _I feel like I could fly with the boy on the moon  
_ _So honey, hold my hand, you like making me wait for it  
_ _I feel like I could die walking up to the room, oh yeah_

Carly, who’s materialized next to him like the tiny elf person she is, beams up at him. “Isn’t he great?” she chirps.

“Oh, super great,” David sighs.

🎼

“So when we agreed to take things slow,” David says, trying to remember which floor they’re on and also how to operate elevators. They’re standing a respectful, businesslike, manager-and-artist-approved distance apart of three feet, but all David wants to do is _bite _him.

Patrick pushes the button for what is hopefully the correct floor, for all the world (and the elevator cameras) looking like a bored musician crashing early in his rooms after a successful set. It’s exactly what David suggested; it’s driving him absolutely crazy. “David, I waited for you to catch a clue for almost a year, and we’ve been taking things slow for a month. If you’re not ready, I respect that, but if you are—“

“I am,” he says, nodding, because there’s playing it cool and there’s sheer lunacy. “Very, very, yes, ready.”

Patrick nods back, mocking. “So how about we go up to our room and make use of one of the two beds that Stevie thoughtfully provided for us?”

“I mean,” David tries to convey a certain degree of nonchalance but the way he’s grinning is probably giving the game away, if Patrick’s answering smile is any indication, “I suppose, in the interest of keeping our moneymaker—“

“Gonna be honest, having you refer to me as your moneymaker is kind of a turn-on,” Patrick murmurs, leaning close just as the door makes an obnoxious _ding!_ and opens onto — yes, their floor, and it appears to be empty, but Patrick holds the doors open for him. “After you.”

“Okay, and now I’m thinking that you’re getting turned on by _my_ moneymaker,” says David, which probably isn’t funny but Patrick’s hustling him down the hall so he’s probably still getting laid.

Patrick slams the door shut behind them and shoves David up against it, dropping his guitar case with a faintly unmusical clang and sliding his hands under David’s sweater, callouses rough against his waist. He kisses David on the jaw, his neck, back up to his mouth like he’s starving for it, and David holds on the best he can.

“Fuck me, David, please,” Patrick whispers against his mouth. “_Please_.”

“God, okay, yes,” David says, or tries to, but Patrick grabs him by the neck to haul him back in for another kiss, frantic. It’s more than David dreamed about.

He’s dreamed a _lot_ about this.

Patrick backs him into the bedroom, around the suitcase stand and toward the second bed, hands fisted in David’s sweater. David manages to get Patrick’s stupid shirt unbuttoned, and Patrick breaks away long enough to fling it off somewhere onto the floor, leaving David just enough time to pull off his sweater and T-shirt. But then Patrick’s _on_ him, tipping them both back onto the mattress, his fingers (god, those fingers) scratching a long line down from his neck to his navel, gasping against David’s throat when David jerks his hips up.

“God, I want you,” Patrick breathes into his mouth. “Wanted it for—“

David pushes at Patrick’s shoulder until he rolls to one side, letting David get on top so he can stare down at Patrick, beautiful in the grey-black of the hotel room. “What specifically,” David asks, thrusting down against Patrick’s cock, too much fabric between them but still delicious, “What specifically do you want?”

“Is ‘fuck me’ somehow unclear?” Patrick asks, hooking his heel around David’s thigh. He’s halfway between annoyed and aroused and amused, and David’s never wanted anyone like this.

“Well,” David has to admit, “Okay, no. But you said—“ He gets distracted by Patrick’s mouth for a minute, and it takes longer than that to remember his train of thought. “You said. You’ve never… done that. With a guy. And anal penetration—“

“‘Anal penetration’ is a very sexy phrase, just so you’re aware,” Patrick says, and David has to kiss him again.

“I’m _saying_,” he says, remembering that he’s exasperated, “That for your first time, maybe something—“

“I’ve had things up my ass before, David,” Patrick says, his grin gleeful and positively demonic in the slanted light.

David’s brain goes offline for a second. “I — really.”

Patrick nods, frowning in that serious way when he’s being thoroughly unserious. It’s usually infuriating; here, spread out under David’s hands, it’s breathtaking. “Really.”

“When exactly was this?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never been pegged before,” Patrick says, and oh, _there’s_ an image. “And no, it wasn’t Rachel. I wasn’t quite _that_ adventurous at seventeen.”

“Let’s not discuss either a) your ex-girlfriends or b) yourself as a minor while we’re fucking,” David proposes. “As a couple of ground rules.”

“We’re not fucking yet.” Patrick’s hands are restless on David’s back, pushing up against him. “Come _on_—“

“Well what if _I’m_ not ready for this, hmm?” David says, because he gets very limited opportunities to troll Patrick and he’s going to take them as they come. “It’s a big step in any sexual relationship, and up until about fifteen seconds ago we were still taking things slow. I was thinking some nice handjobs, maybe some intercrural shenanigans—“

“Oh my _god_, why do I like you,” Patrick groans, even as David thrusts against him. “Fine, I’m — whatever you want, David, just, _please_—“

“This ‘please’ thing is great, just so you know, I’m a big fan,” David says, and manages to climb off the bed and stumble into the bathroom. He grabs the lube and, after a moment of indecision, takes the whole box of Stevie’s horrible present. They had an early set, it’s a long night, and he checked — the hotel’s room service runs twenty-four hours.

Patrick’s wriggling out of his one-step-above-jeggings, his shoes already kicked off, and for a moment David’s seized by a wave of fondness that’s so fierce and terrifying it makes his heart skip. Patrick notices him and flings the pants off with a final flourish of his foot, one sock going with them, and makes a “tada” motion that really shouldn’t be endearing, at all.

David’s got a dozen smartass comments he could make, but Patrick’s naked — mostly, one sock still hanging on and his boxer-briefs dark against his skin — and beautiful in the light coming in from the window, and there’s nothing David wants to do more than touch him.

“David,” Patrick says, like a prayer, like the lyric to a song, and David has to kiss him, has to climb on top of him to feel the soft curve of his waist, the light dusting of hair across his chest, the jut of his collarbone just beneath his skin. Patrick’s thighs grip at his waist, and he twists away from David to pant, “You’re still wearing _pants_.”

“You literally never stop complaining,” David complains, but Patrick laughs as David rolls to one side to shimmy out of his own pants and boxers. Patrick leans on one elbow, gazing at him with what David hopes is appreciation. “Well?” he demands, when Patrick just keeps looking at him.

“I thought you said you weren’t ready,” Patrick says, picking up the Trojan box and waggling it at David. “I’m getting some mixed signals, here.”

“I’ll give you mixed signals,” David mutters, and crawls back between his legs, snagging the lube on his way and dripping some on his fingers. He elbows Patrick’s legs apart and takes a minute to appreciate the view: Patrick’s cock, thick and hard, the wiry red-brown hair at his groin, the smooth line of his thighs.

Patrick falls back on the covers, reaching up to grab hold of David’s shoulders. His grin could light up Toronto. “Look, I want to respect your wishes—“

David goes with him, but not without a fight. “Since when have you _ever_—“

“And if that means you’re not ready—“ Patrick gasps because David’s decided the best way to shut him up is a finger sliding smoothly inside him. “_Oh_. Oh god, yes.”

“All right,” David promises into the skin of Patrick’s neck, pulling out just a little before pressing back in, Patrick’s panting breath like music in his ear. “You’ve convinced me.”

“I’m glad,” says Patrick, a little higher-pitched than normal as David slides in another finger. “Although I can’t help but notice Stevie didn’t give _me_ any condoms.” He smirks up at David even as he’s — Christ — _undulating_ against David’s fingers, his hands clenched tight in David’s hair.

David tries to focus, which is pretty much impossible. “She probably thought that as your manager, I should be in charge of the prophylactics.”

“So they _are_ for me,” says Patrick, grinning like a lunatic, a red flush all down his neck and chest.

David tries to glare but he can’t, not with this in front of him. “I mean,” he says, “Yes.” And he adds a third finger, just a little faster and harder, the tiniest bit mean about it, because Patrick is talking way too much.

“_Oh_,” is the response he gets, a long exhale, and when Patrick breathes in there’s a ragged edge to it, which is an improvement. David takes Patrick’s cock, wet and leaking, in his other hand and is rewarded by Patrick’s hips coming off the bed with a shout, Patrick’s eyes shocked and bright. “David, _fuck_, I need you, please, please,” and there’s nothing in the world that’s going to sound better than this.

David pulls out his fingers and fumbles out a condom, managing to get it open despite the lube and the way Patrick’s got his ankles wrapped high around his waist already. He gets it on and then there’s just the heavy, warm press against Patrick’s hole, Patrick opening up to him sweet and slick.

Patrick throws his head back, his throat one long invitation; David bites down as he pushes in and Patrick _keens_, arching into him. “David,” he says, slurred and hitching as David sets up a rhythm for him. “David, _David_.”

“You’re so beautiful like this,” David says, because he is, he’s perfect. “You should be here all the time, spread open, wet and tight and just for me—”

“Yes,” Patrick gasps, “Yeah, yes, I promise—“ he twists his hips and abruptly comes all over himself, a slick mess on his stomach and chest, and that’s all David needs; he comes in a rush, stuttering into him with a few more thrusts.

David more or less collapses on top of him, his forehead against Patrick’s shoulder as he tries to catch his breath. Patrick’s still wrapped around him and it feels… David’s not sure what it feels like. Good. Not exactly comfortable, since the condom is going to be a problem in a minute and his back isn’t 100% sure about this position. But he doesn’t want to move.

Patrick shifts a bit under him, though, and David makes to get off him — but Patrick’s legs and arms tighten and he presses a kiss to David’s temple, inhaling like he can’t get enough of David’s smell, which is a little gross but he’ll let it slide. “So that was a nice step,” he said.

David hopes Patrick can feel his smile against his shoulder. “Mm, not bad.” This time he does move away, pulling out carefully but with a little hissing on both their parts. He ties off the condom and tosses it to the side, falling onto his back. Only then looks over at Patrick, who’s already looking back at him with a predatory expression. “Oh god, what monster have I unleashed,” he whines as Patrick leans over to kiss him.

“David Rose,” Patrick says, his hands everywhere, “You have no idea.”

🎼

He wakes up to white sheets and sunlight pouring in through the windows, still early. There’s a line of warmth all along his left side; he only has to turn a little to nuzzle into Patrick’s shoulder, lazy and heat-seeking, because it turns out Patrick is a goddamn furnace.

“G’morning,” Patrick says. “Sleep well?”

“Mm,” David responds, kissing the skin he can reach. “When I was finally _allowed _to, yes.”

Patrick laughs, and David manages to crack one eye open. He’s reading something on his phone and has a cup of what David’s pretty sure is coffee on the side table.

“How long have you been awake?” David demands, reaching over him to snag the coffee. It’s got two sugars and three creams, and David has to sip at it to hide his smile. “Long enough for this coffee to be at a suboptimal temperature.”

“Only you would complain about someone very nicely making you coffee without disturbing you — which, I have to say, was a lot easier to do when we weren’t sharing a bed,” Patrick said, tugging the coffee away to kiss him.

“I am one of a kind,” David agrees, and steals his coffee back. “What are you doing, reading reviews? Has Stevie sent any write-ups yet?” He should get his own phone and check. Instead he snuggles down into the sheets against Patrick’s side, cradling his coffee between his hands.

“No, just another new fic,” Patrick says, turning his attention back to his phone.

“Oh, God,” David mutters. “And don’t say ‘fic’ like you’re one of the cool kids.”

“It’s really cute, though,” Patrick says, scrolling up with his thumb. “Rachel sent it to me, it’s another one of her and TSwift—“

“Okay, don’t call her that—“

“Where I’m the evil cad who breaks Rachel’s heart. _And _it’s based on the music video for ‘You Belong With Me,’ so I’m already on board.”

“You and Rachel reconnecting is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” David decides, finishing off his coffee and setting it on the bedside stand.

“I’m a football player in this one,” Patrick says, wriggling down into the sheets. “And really bad at something that requires me to get tutored. AP Bio, apparently.”

“I don’t approve of stories that romanticize student/teacher relationships,” David says, trying to get the phone away from him.

Patrick holds him off with depressing ease as he continues to read. “I’ll keep that in mind. Oh no, I’m a terrible boyfriend in this,” he adds, looking crestfallen.

“The joke is too easy and I refuse to make it on principle,” David says, and bypasses the phone altogether by slipping his hands under the sheets and up Patrick’s thigh, finding Patrick’s cock half-hard already. “Hmm, I have to say I’m disappointed that I missed the opportunity to ogle you while you were making coffee naked.”

“Next time,” Patrick says, _finally_ abandoning his phone and letting David press him into the mattress.

“Oh, is there going to be a next time?” asks David, wide-eyed even while he straddles Patrick’s hips, drinking in the way Patrick has to shut his eyes against the feel of them rubbing together. “This isn’t just a one-night fling?”

“It’s morning,” Patrick points out, only a little bit strangled.

David sits up, pretending to consider, and Patrick follows him, wrapping his arms loose around David’s waist. David’s hands settle on his shoulders, the way they’ve been trained to do already, some Pavlovian response that he shouldn’t examine too closely.

“It’s okay to admit that you like me,” Patrick says, soft and sweet. “I won’t tell anyone.”

David can _feel_ the smile on his face, pushing his cheeks up into his eyes and almost hurting. “Baby, I hate to say it,” he croons, trying and failing to hit the high notes, “But you’ll never take me alive.”

Patrick’s laugh skitters over the sheets and bounces across the room, joyous, and David can’t help but push him back down to taste it on his tongue.

🎼

And for a while, it’s good. It’s better than good.

Patrick gets his own apartment in the Annex, with room for an absurdly large piano and not a whole lot else, but he capitulates to David’s very reasonable demands (“they’re requests, thank you,” David corrects, curling in closer to him on the couch while they’re browsing through Bed Bath & Beyond’s website) of sheets with at least 750 thread count and a coffee maker not from Canadian Tire.

(“And if I don’t honor these requests,” Patrick asks, putting one arm around his shoulders even though that probably makes it harder to type, “Will you actually stay over?”

“Maybe,” David says. He’s trying hard to make it sound like “maybe” means “no, because I have standards,” but judging by Patrick’s expression, he’s landed squarely on “yes, because I’m already very stupid about you.”)

It solves their privacy problem nicely, although Alexis figures things out in less than three days despite spending a disturbing amount of time over at _Ted’s_ place, which, David had _not_ seen that coming.

“All I’m saying, David, is that you should be careful about mixing business with pleasure,” she says, prim and judgy.

David glares at her. “You’re _literally_ dating _Ted the vet comedian_,” he hisses.

“Whatever, I’m not his manager, except like, technically,” she says. “And I’m not even talking about that, necessarily. Being suddenly famous can be really stressful, and sometimes people don’t make the best decisions.”

“Are you equating Patrick and I dating to that time you tried an undercut? Because if so—“

“Ugh, I’m _trying_ to say that I hope you two are happy, or whatever, but just like,” and she gestures with her hands in a way that doesn’t really mean anything but David understands all the same.

“We _are_ happy,” he says, and has a mild-to-moderate panic attack on the ride over to Patrick’s when he realizes that he means it.

Patrick doesn’t show any signs of wanting to get an undercut (not that anyone would be able to tell) or having any other kind of fame-related psychotic break. He cooks David dinners most nights and they watch old movies (“‘The Breakfast Club’ doesn’t count as an old movie, David,”) and argue about what offers Patrick ought to accept, because Patrick Brewer gets enough offers now that he doesn’t have to accept everything. He plays the guitar and piano at ungodly hours, (“Eight in the morning! It’s _unendurable_, how did I end up with a boyfriend who’s a _morning person_?”) and kisses David soft and sweet whenever he can.

(“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” Patrick says, delighted, from his spot on the couch where he’s absently massaging David’s feet.

“I said it’s unendurable,” David backpedals, but Patrick’s pushing his feet off his lap and climbing on top of him, all sharp smiles and whispers of “_boyfriend” _against David’s throat.)

But if they’re not exactly going slow anymore, they’re also not going public. David hadn’t been kidding about not wanting people to spit on him, and for a while that seems to be a good enough reason.

“I just think the longer we keep it a secret, the more there’s going to be… I don’t know,” Patrick shrugs, looking out the window of the SUV on their way to a charity performance in Ottowa. David’s been pushing for more US engagement but Patrick’s weirdly stubborn about playing for every individual Canadian, it seems. “Blowback. Or like we were trying to hide it.”

“We _are_ trying to hide it,” David feels compelled to point out.

Patrick looks back at him, not annoyed but serious. “I’m not. I don’t want to.”

It’s David’s turn to look away. “And I… don’t want to need to, either.”

“David, it’s 2018, we _don’t_ need to—“

“It’s not that,” David says, because it isn’t. “It’s — a lot of things, okay? And yes, some of them are about you and your career and me not wanting to screw up your career, which I appreciate that _you_ don’t care about that much, but there are now a few dozen _other_ people’s careers, including mine, that hinge on _your_ career continuing in at least something resembling an upward trajectory, okay? But there’s also _me_, in this relationship, and I’m not super jazzed about the inevitable René Angélil comparisons. And,” he flexes his hands, tries to wrap them around the thing, the thing he’s never had to say before, because there was never anyone to say it to. “And I feel like we might be tempting fate, if you go out there and make some declaration of — I don’t want all of that pressure to affect what we have. Because what we have is _great_, it’s… it’s so great, Patrick, it’s unbelievably great. It’s the best thing that’s,” and he’s not sure he can keep going, but Patrick puts his hand on his and laces their fingers together, and he’s able to do something very brave and look over at Patrick.

Patrick is smiling; warm and fond and secret. “Okay, David,” he says.

🎼

“David,” his mother calls out to him a few days later, from Dad’s office. “A moment, if you would?”

Alarm bells start ringing the minute he steps inside the office: Mom’s beaming like she just heard Gloria Gregson died, and Dad’s wearing his lucky pocket square. “What’s going on?”

Dad gestures awkwardly to the guest chair. “Sit down, son, we have some news.”

“If this is about Jake hooking up with that K-pop girl, Alexis is taking care of it. Apparently it’s doing wonders for his overseas sales.”

Dad frowns. “Alexis, right, she should probably be here for this.”

“Well, she’s in Seoul, which is in Korea, so unless this news can be put on hold for eighteen hours—“

But clearly Mom’s not able to wait that long. “We’ve had an offer!” she says, pressing her hands together. “An offer at last! Befitting our tireless efforts of the past few years.”

David’s not entirely clear on what efforts Mom’s actually put into the label, other than trying to convince Dad to release an album of her reciting monologues from her days on Sunrise Bay, but that’s not really the point. “An offer,” he says. “Which is?”

“Andrew Roberts of Top Shelf Records,” says Mom, with that cadence that means she’s rehearsed it a few times. “A veritable musical savant when it comes to sniffing out talent amongst the hoi-polloi.”

“Now, it’s not an amazing offer by any means.” Dad makes a calming gesture that’s likely more directed at Mom than at him. “We’re not going to take him up on it.”

“But it’s proof that our branding is hot!” Mom doesn’t look all that calm. “Think about it, companies lining up to get a slice of—“

“Of Schitt?” David finishes for her. He stands up “Okay, well, that’s — news, I guess.”

“David,” Mom says, reproachful. “You don’t sound entirely euphoric.”

“About _what_? That we got a bad offer to buy a company I’ve been trying to make succeed for three years? I guess I’m glad you’ve decided to reject it, without consulting me. Or Alexis,” he adds.

Dad doesn’t look angry, but his pocket square has visibly wilted. “What are you saying, son?”

“I… don’t know… if we should sell,” he says, folding his arms across his chest. “We’re doing very well here, and we’ve got some real momentum, and—“

“And do you really want to spend the rest of your life in and out of speakeasies and rundown bistros, searching for the next Patrick Brewer?” Mom came over, picking at some invisible lint on his shoulder. “You can’t imagine we’ll catch that particular bottled lightning a second time, do you? Best to strike while the iron is well-roasted.”

David feels every muscle in his body clenching. “Okay, I don’t _need_ to search for the next Patrick Brewer? Because I’ve already got him, and even if we do sell, I’m not giving him up, so.”

“You’d… want to stay on as his manager?” Dad asks, his eyebrows beetling together.

“Oh, dear,” says Mom, who’s picking a _great_ time to be insightful about David’s personal life. “I thought we discussed the dangers of letting one’s quill drift into the company ink when that unfortunate affair with Jacob concluded—“

“Okay, it might have been unfortunate, but I hardly think it even merited the term ‘affair,’” David objects, “And _Patrick_ is not an affair, okay?”

“Wait, you and Patrick_?_” Dad asks, with unflattering disbelief. “I thought he and that Rachel girl were an item!”

“Oh, my God,” David mutters. “Look, are we done? Because I have things to do today. Don’t forget to call Alexis and tell _her_ the big news, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”

Dad gets to his feet. “David, we should talk more about this.”

“Nope, I think we’re good here,” David says, and makes his escape.

🎼

The rest of the day _should_ be uneventful, which would be a nice change, but because David’s done something horrible in a former life he gets a voice memo from Patrick a few hours later.

“Don’t be mad,” it starts, which warns David he should start getting mad as soon as possible. “But Shelly — you remember Shelly, on my baseball team?”

“No,” David mutters, even though this is a message, because all uniforms look the same to him.

“Anyway, she has a bar on Ossington and Foxley and asked if I’d stop by for a set this afternoon? Annnnd I’m about to go onstage but there’s at least… two people I can see with their phones out already, so if you see this on the tweeters in the next hour, uh, sorry.” He sounds absolutely zero percent sorry.

There’s no reason to go down there; if Patrick’s about to embarrass himself on social media, there’s not a whole lot David will be able to do other than yell at him, which he’s planning to do anyway. Besides, Patrick’s their biggest talent but he’s hardly their only one; David has a dozen demo tapes to listen to and twice that many calls to field. There are tours to arrange, even though (thank fuck) he won’t have to go on any of them, press releases to write, things to do.

But the office is stuffy and too small and if he stays here, Dad’s going to corner him eventually to talk to him about feelings or professionalism or something that’s going to give him hives. So instead David walks the five blocks to a shabby-chic bar called Tipsy Business at the corner of Ossington and Foxley, just as Patrick’s wrapping up a weirdly upbeat variation of “Apollo.” There’s a couple dozen people at the bars and the tables around the tiny stage; the number of people filming is decidedly more than two at this point.

“Thank you so much for your time,” Patrick is saying from the stage, seated at an upright piano that’s come straight out of a spaghetti western. He catches sight of David. “And now,” he drawls, and David feels not so much dread as resignation, because of course Patrick knew he was going to show up, and of course he waited until he did to pull this shit, “I’d like to dedicate this next song to someone very special in my life.”

David slouches onto the nearest barstool and waves over the bartender as Patrick starts playing — kind of. David opens his mouth to order a glass of wine and instead asks, “What the hell is wrong with that thing?”

The bartender, a perky-looking blonde who’s about a foot taller than he is, laughs. “The piano? It’s… yeah, not in great shape. But he wanted to play it — I warned him, but he said he likes a challenge.”

“Oh God,” David mutters, “I hate him _so much._”

“Yeah, he gets that a lot,” says the bartender. “You’re David, right? David Rose? I’m Shelly. Patrick said you’d probably come in. Apparently I’m supposed to stop you from strangling him, at least until he gets offstage.”

“Oh God,” he repeats. “I was going to order a glass of your chardonnay but could you just bring me the whole bottle?”

“Sure thing,” she says.

Patrick picks that moment to start the first verse:

_You're on the phone with your girlfriend  
_ _She's upset  
_ _She's going off about something that you said  
_ _'Cause she doesn't get your humor like I do  
_ _I'm in my room  
_ _It's a typical Tuesday night_  
_I'm listening to the kind of music she doesn't like  
_ _And she'll never know your story like I do_

Patrick leans into the chorus, singing mournfully about short skirts and bleachers, and David wants to bury his face in his hands.

Because what he actually _wants_ to do is laugh. He wants to laugh at Patrick being fucking ridiculous, singing “You Belong With Me” to a bunch of afternoon drunks just to troll David. He wants to walk over to the piano and sit down next to him, he wants everyone there to know that this is for him, that Patrick’s doing it because he — because they’re —

But instead he pulls out his phone to check who might have posted about this already. He retweets one of the videos he finds to Patrick’s twitter and Instagram; he types out a few cheerful responses to some of the more persistent fans. And he doesn’t look up as Patrick sings, soft and sweet, “Have you ever thought just maybe, you belong with me.”


	5. Chapter 5

"Why am I going to this again?" Patrick asks, ignoring the jacket David's holding out for him and buttoning up his shirt. "And no," he adds off of David's narrowed eyes and vehement shake of the jacket, "I'm not wearing that to a movie."

"It's a _premiere_," David corrects him, "And it's going to be one that you'll be photographed at. I'd rather you be photographed wearing Armani than something off the discount rack at Winners."

"Excuse you, this is from Hudson's Bay," Patrick says, taking the jacket in order to step close for a kiss--before throwing it on the second bed.

"You’re a monster," David tells him, even while he kisses back.

They're in Los Angeles for the next week, schedule full to bursting with an assortment of parties, interviews, and meetings culminating in the MTV Video Music Awards down in Santa Monica. Patrick's been nominated for Best New Artist, which is insane considering he's up against _Cardi B_. Still, it's an honor just to be nominated, and David honestly feels like Patrick could stand to be a little more excited about it.

("I'm excited," Patrick said when the nominations came out. "I just don't know why we have to spend a whole week in LA."

David huffs at him. "_Because,_ when you're about to lose the Best New Artist award to Cardi B, there's some publicity that goes along with that."

"It's actually Best New Artist, Presented By Taco Bell," Patrick says, reading off the nomination list. "FYI.")

Tonight is the fifth of what Patrick's calling the Seven Days of Nonsense: tonight is the red carpet opening to Jake's execrable action movie, _Dog Days_; Patrick's got a ticket on the strength of them both being signed to Schitt Records and that time last year at the office Festivus party that Jake told Patrick he had a slappable ass. Tomorrow is the only day with nothing on the books, other than maybe some nice shower sex in the morning.

"And I don’t plan to wear Armani then, either," Patrick points out, nibbling along David's collarbone.

"You could, though," David says, glad that Patrick can't see his grin. "I wouldn’t be mad about it."

"I wasn’t aware you were into roleplay, David," Patrick teases. "You want me to be the James Bond type?"

"Armani doesn’t make you James Bond," says David. "But if you want to be the Daniel Craig to my Rachel Weisz, by all means."

"I would love to, David, only apparently we have to go to this movie," Patrick murmurs.

"Oh, there's no 'we,'" David says, angling his neck a little better. "As highly as you might think of me, I don't actually merit a ticket."

"Guess it's a good thing Rachel's going," says Patrick, and steps back. _His_ grin is visible from space.

David blanches. "I don't—"

"Brook, not Weisz. She texted me yesterday," he says, clapping David on the arm. "We'll be each other's plus-ones, it'll be great. Just like old times."

There's only a half hour before Patrick's due on the red carpet, so David doesn't really have time to explain why this will not necessarily be great, and Patrick never listens to him anyway. So he sends him off in a limo and, cross-legged on the loveseat with three screens and a bag of Twizzlers, waits for the inevitable.

It doesn’t take long. **#BROOKER** trends first in LA and then nationwide; there's a lot of screaming on Twitter about Patrick offering Rachel his arm to promenade all the more photogenically down the carpet. She's wearing vintage Alexander McQueen, which should make Patrick look shlubby but instead gives the impression that he dressed specifically to showcase her. There's already a gif of them, laughing and playing thumb war against the backdrop of Jake's terrible poster where he's got a puppy in one hand and an Uzi in the other.

David refrains from sending more than three messages to Patrick along the theme of "I told you so," but he doesn't get a response for a few hours — it's entirely possible that Patrick and Rachel are actually _watching the movie_, which seems like punishment enough. David fields calls from reporters, from Dad, from Stevie, and from _Ted_ of all people.

"Okay, what has Alexis been telling you?" David demands.

Ted makes an awkward noise over the phone. "I just wanted to check in."

"I'm fine," David says, wondering what his life has come to that he's offering reassurance to his client-slash-sister's-boyfriend about _his_ _own love life_. "Tell Alexis to—" There's a knock on the door. "Okay, Ted, I have to go."

"Just remember that it's never a bad time to talk honestly about your feel—"

David hangs up on him and goes to the door, where whoever is on the other side is still knocking. "Okay, I got the message!" he calls, and opens it.

"David!" Patrick crows, crouched a little bit because he's piggybacking what at first glance looks like a very tiny hobo but which turns out to be _Rachel Brooks_ in a giant grey hoodie and sweatpants so long that they cover her feet. Patrick, for his part, is still in his jeans and shirt and fugly braided belt, but he's added an Adidas visor and a blue poncho that says "DODGERS" across the front.

"Oh, my God," David replies, shooing them inside and slamming the door shut. "What is happening?"

"David," says Patrick, as he sinks slowly onto the second bed. Because Rachel's still on his back, this has the effect of landing him more or less in her lap. "David. We really tried to watch the movie, but it was…"

"It," Rachel pronounces, struggling out from underneath him, "Was _bad_."

"So you decided to get drunk?" David demands. "Which one do I need to stage an intervention for first? And _what_ is with the… getup, here?"

"I don't think I can convey to you how bad the movie was," Patrick says, "And _Jake_ was the one who started drinking. He had like, what, three flasks?"

"Five," Rachel replies. "One of them was absinthe."

"Okay," David says, because that tracks. "But that doesn't explain the clothes."

Rachel makes a complicated gesture with her hands, which is mostly obscured by the too-long sleeves. "Well, I had to pee. And Patrick helped me because it was getting kind of hard to walk in my heels, and then we were like, oh no, we don't want to go back and watch the rest of it! So we sneaked—"

"Snuck," Patrick corrects.

"Snacked," Rachel compromises, "Into my Escalade around the back. And _usually _I have like a nice bag of normie clothes in the trunk! But I think the last time Taylor and… um." She bites her lip. "Anyway, when I looked in the bag, this was what was in it."

"So that explains why you're wearing Brienne of Tarth's sweatsuit," David says. "But the poncho and visor combo is still a, um, a courageous choice."

"I needed a disguise!" Patrick protests. "And we went past one of those tourist shops, and you know I'd never wear Dodgers gear." He spreads his arms like this is any kind of explanation.

"The visor was my idea," says Rachel, proud.

"You two are a fucking menace," David mutters. He goes back to the loveseat and opens his laptop.

"Where are you going?" Patrick asks, distraught.

"I'm checking to see if anyone saw you piggybacking a two-time Grammy award winner down Hollywood Boulevard," David tells him, snapping his fingers at Rachel, who's making for the minibar. "Ah-ah-ah!"

"Ugh, you're so _responsbabble_," Rachel sighs as she crumples into a heap on the loveseat next to him.

There's nothing David can find, other than the small implosion amongst the Taychel shippers who aren't taking the rumor that Patrick and Rachel left the screening early together particularly well. He also gets some panicked messages from Rachel Brooks's people, asking super casually if he's heard from her at all, so he has to prod her into calling her various handlers and assuring them that she's alive if not exactly well.

By the time David reemerges from his deep dive into the pits of Reddit and Tumblr, there's a gentle snore from the direction of the second bed; Patrick's passed out, the visor pulled low over his face and the poncho draped over him like a blanket. Rachel, for her part, has snuggled up to David's side in a way he's reasonably sure she wouldn't do sober. "Uh," he says.

"You're so soft," Rachel mumbles, snuffling her nose against his sleeve. "Like a big grumpy pillow. With really pointy elbows."

"I don't think that's a compliment but I'm going to take it as one," David says, as Rachel rearranges his arm around her shoulders to her liking. "Um, Rachel. I just want to be clear, here, that you are a very wonderful person who I have only rarely wanted to drop off a tall building, but—"

She reaches up to press a finger to his mouth, only she misses and sticks it up his nostril. "Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," she says, making it into about seven syllables. "I know." And she tries to wink, which she somehow does even worse than Patrick.

"You… know," he echoes.

She nods slowly like she's one of those puppy bobbleheads. "I think you two are _great_," she says. "And I mean! I _mean_! It's great. You two," she says. "Are. Great."

"Thank you." David can't help looking over at Patrick, sprawled out and snoring and causing a small war on social media.

"I mean, you're actually _together_," Rachel says, "That's just… so huge!"

"Rachel," he says, but he's not sure what to say.

"He actually had the guts to tell you how he felt, and you had the guts to tell him how _you_ felt, and you both have enormous guts. You knew how you felt and you did something about it and it's just. It's so much guts."

David opens his mouth, then closes it. "I'm getting the feeling you're not actually talking about me and Patrick."

She blinks up at him. Her eyeliner is starting to smear, and her lipstick is long gone. "I just wish I was as gutsy as you," she sighs. "I just wish she was…" She drifts off, and when David looks down she's fallen asleep, drooling gently on his Balenciaga sweater.

"I hate everything about this," David decides.

🎼

His plan to abandon them both to their respective locations and get some well-earned sleep himself backfires horribly the next morning when he's faced with not one but _two_ chipper morning people. "What the fuck is wrong with Kingston?" he demands, rubbing his face in an effort to get his eyes to work. "Do you all just roll out of bed at dawn to sing the sun up?"

"Yes, and then we take a brisk half-K swim in the harbor," Rachel says, with startling sarcasm.

"Oo know Kingshtun'sh outshide Toronno, right?" Patrick calls from the bathroom, slightly muffled from what David hopes is a toothbrush. "Ish not on sh'_moon_."

"You could at least feel bad that neither of you even have a hangover, which you absolutely deserve," David says, flinging off the covers and pouring himself some coffee. He'd feel weirder about having slept in the same room as Rachel Brooks, except Rachel Brooks is currently braiding her hair into uneven pigtails and has at some point scrubbed her face clean of makeup. Even while they'd been on tour with her David had never seen her like this, with freckles on her nose and still yawning around her coffee. Patrick had told him once that even after he'd broken up with her, for years after, he'd thought of her as someone who he could've married, who he would have, in a different life where neither of them became rock stars and they'd instead settled down on some suburban cul-de-sac. David's glad that didn't happen — for a host of reasons — but he can understand how it might have, in that quiet alternate universe.

"I feel terrible," Rachel assures him. "What do you say I make it up to you guys? You can come over to my place for brunch, I'll make breakfast—"

Patrick's head pops around the doorway. "You'll what now?"

"I'll order breakfast," she amends. "It'll be great."

"That's what Patrick said last night, right before I sent him off to get plastered with you and Jakey Five-Flask," David says, but they have the day free and he's not going to pass up the opportunity to eat crepes ("Oh, is that what we're having?" Patrick asks as they pile into Rachel's Escalade. "Yes," David replies, "Because of the three of us, I'm the only one who _didn't_ drink absinthe and buy a poncho last night." "Technically Rachel bought the poncho.") on the balcony of some West Hollywood mansion.

But Rachel's place turns out to be a relatively unassuming house near Runyon Canyon, with a room entirely devoted to weird-looking guitars but no cryogenic chamber _or_ moat. The kitchen is immaculate the way only a kitchen that's never been used can be; Rachel opens the fridge to reveal an entire shelf of Frescas and a very sad-looking container of elderly Chinese.

"How do you live like this?" Patrick demands, opening and closing various empty cupboards.

"It seems fine to me," David tells Rachel, who beams at him.

"Oh, that comment was fully for both of you," Patrick assures them. "David stores his skin care products in the oven at _his_ apartment, there’s three mugs and two forks in the entire place."

"Excuse me, but I pay for other people to make food _for_ me," David tells him, sitting down at the kitchen table. "I’m sorry that you’ve never grasped that particular benefit of capitalism."

"Pretty sure non-capitalist countries have restaurants, too, David," Patrick says, pulling out his phone. "So where are we ordering from?"

They get one of everything from Shaky Alibi and Rachel gives them a tour while they’re waiting. Patrick is adorably wide-eyed over everything, and even David admits to being impressed at the Titian hanging in her office.

"Yeah, that’s really neat," Patrick says absently, before drifting over to a guitar hanging up on the opposite wall. "Is this a _Ramírez_?"

"Yup," she says, crossing her arms. "My team at LCG Records gave it to me a few months ago, when _Thirtysmthg_ hit triple. I think they’re nervous about my contract renegotiation coming up."

Patrick looks over at David, his eyebrows furrowed. (Probably furrowed; it’s hard to tell in the light.) "David," he says sternly, "_No_."

"I didn’t say anything!" David protests, even though he had in fact been about to say something. "I didn’t say a single word, I didn’t even make a noise, which for me? Is very restrained."

Rachel looks back and forth between them. "Do I want to know?"

"David was about to start dropping hints that you should sign with Schitt Records instead, even though I’ve seen their accounts and there’s _no way they can afford you_." Patrick’s staring at David even while he explains to Rachel; it’s probably meant to be intimidating.

"Okay," says David, "I’m sorry if you just lack the _vision_ to believe that a brilliant singer-songwriter such as Rachel Brooks who, yes, did just go triple platinum _again_ — something, by the way, _Patrick_, you have yet to do even once — might want a home with a company that offers a more… bespoke experience."

"That’s a very sweet offer, David, thank you," Rachel says, shaking her head. "But — I don’t know, it just feels like no matter what I do, I don’t really have a stake in it; I’m just working for someone else. Maybe I should just start my own record label." She laughs. "But only if I get Patrick as my accountant."

"Well unfortunately, he is under contract already," David says. Patrick shakes his head.

"Besides," and Rachel’s grinning now, "You’re right — Patrick never had much vision. In third grade he objected to our school putting on 'Noah’s Ark’ because he thought we were going to have an actual ark onstage, as well as real animals, and it would put too much of a strain on the school budget."

"Oh my God," David breathes, as Patrick turns a bright red and buries his face in his hands, "What a _nerd_."

"Oh, I have stories," Rachel promises him. "I’ll tell you some more over breakfast."

And she does — over waffles with names like Cinn-sational and The Elvis, Rachel and Patrick take turns telling him embarrassing stories about their childhood and teenage years, laughing until they’re all crying.

It's… really nice.

David has been bracing himself for this, ever since he and Patrick started whatever it is that they're in the middle of. He's seen enough Hallmark movies to know that having your current boyfriend rekindle a friendship with his ex-girlfriend can spell disaster, especially if the ex-girlfriend is the plucky heroine and you're the bitchy rival.

But Rachel is kind, and funny, and utterly uninterested in Patrick as anything but a friend (and, if their argument over their overlapping ranges is anything to go by, collaborator on some future album). There’s very little hope for David to hold onto Patrick for any real length of time — he’s not an idiot, he knows Patrick’s a victim of a sort of corporate Stockholm Syndrome, that he’ll move on once he realizes he doesn’t have to settle for the nearest donut. But maybe it won’t happen just yet; maybe David’s got a little more time before this all goes to hell. He watches Patrick laugh and steals some of Rachel's bacon and feels something in him unclench.

He also feels something buzzing against his leg; he pulls out his phone.

At first, the words don't even make sense; he has to read it a few times before they arrange themselves properly in his brain, setting cold terror into his stomach:

**patrick just outed on twitter**

🎼

The trip back to the hotel takes forever; Rachel stuffs them into a car and David spends most of his time talking to Stevie and Jocelyn, who are tag-teaming a response to this along with the rest of Patrick's PR team. "Your name hasn't popped up yet as the other man," Stevie says, in between yelling at some intern named Mindy, "But they'll probably put two and two together eventually. The video — it's blurry but it's not _that_ blurry."

_"_I haven't seen it," David admits, glancing over at Patrick.

Patrick, for his part, hasn't said much; he keeps pulling his phone out of his pocket and putting it back, over and over, and David's fingers itch with not touching him.

It _is_ blurry; they watch it up in the hotel room on the laptop. Two figures are walking up the street at night, and David recognizes the sad stunted tree near Patrick’s doorway, the garish van that’s usually parked across the way. One figure turns to kiss the other, his face in full view of the person taking the video for just a moment.

Just long enough.

"Okay, well," Patrick says from beside him, "That's not great."

David shuts his eyes. "As I recall, it was a very good kiss."

"Thanks," says Patrick, his voice warmed with a smile. "But I mean… what do we do now?"

According to Twitter and Alexis's irate texts, the video was posted by someone who'd been taking the whole #BROOKER thing a little too personally. **fuck knows who actually filmed it** she said, **but once I find out I WILL be filling out a restraining order and maybe calling Hayao**

David reads it out to Patrick, who smiles. "I don't know that that'll work, it's not like they broke into my apartment. It’s a public street."

"You seem pretty calm about this," David observes. He takes a second to figure out a way to ask the next question, but there's no possible combination of words that won't end in disaster. "Patrick. I know you've been… not thrilled about keeping this whole thing private? And I understand that. But. Did you—"

Patrick gapes at him. "Are you asking if _I_ did this?"

"I wouldn't be mad!" David says, even though he would in fact be _very _mad. "I just — I have to ask!"

"Do you? Do you really?" Patrick crosses his arms.

"Okay, you were _drunk_ last night, and there were a lot of people on social media talking about that stupid hashtag, so excuse me for asking a _question_—"

"A pretty insulting one! And no, David, believe it or not this isn't how I'd want to come out to—" he scrubs at his face. "So I'm guessing we can't just… deny it."

"Is that what you want to do?" David asks. It's not a serious question; there's no possible way to deny this. He should be calling up Stevie and Alexis to figure out what their next steps are.

Instead he puts his phone down on the desk and looks at Patrick, who's got his hands jammed in his pockets and his shoulders hunched around his ears. "I — I don't know. I'm," Patrick laughs, not sounding happy. "I know I said I didn't want to hide, but I didn't — I think I need to talk to my parents."

For the second time today, the words don't make sense until David replays them a few times over. "They don't know about us."

"They don't know about _me_," Patrick says. He sounds ashamed, a little frightened. He sounds young. "So no, they don't know about us. I was waiting to — I don't know. Before, there never seemed any point. I’d never been with anyone, there was nothing to _tell _them. And then I met you and… but you wanted to keep it a secret—"

"Okay, this is not my fault," David protests, waving his hands. "And I only wanted to keep it private for _you_."

Patrick snorts, turning to look out the window. "Thanks."

"Look, I'm sorry," David says, even though he has no idea what he's apologizing for. "But we can fix this, okay? I just need to talk to Alexis and see what—"

"What if we didn't?"

David looks up from his phone, his thumb hovering over Alexis's name. "What?"

"What if we don't fix it? What's the worst that's gonna happen? Do you really think my career is going to tank if it turns out I'm—"

"Fucking your manager? I don't know, Patrick. Probably not, but—"

"And even if it did," Patrick says, still facing the window, "Would that be so bad?"

"It would be… pretty bad," David says. He can't see Patrick's face. Realistically speaking it shouldn’t matter — he’s never been good at knowing what Patrick’s thinking based on his expressions. But he wants Patrick to turn and face him.

He doesn’t. "What about your general store? We could find a place."

"And do what? I'll run the store, you keep the books, we host an Open Mic night once a month and argue about product placements?" He doesn’t mean for it to come out like that, but this feels too much like Patrick making fun.

"You don't want this life!" Patrick bursts out, finally spinning around. "You've said so, a thousand times. Your parents are going to sell the company and once that happens you’ll be _gone_."

"I’m — no I won’t," David says. He’s having trouble following. "Are you saying — do you think I’d _dump_ you, if the right offer came along?"

"No," Patrick says, too fast, a lie. "I’m saying, you’ve practically got one foot out the door already, and I don’t want to get left behind." He jerks his head, as if flinching away from his own words. "I mean, left behind to deal with all of… this."

The idea that _David_ would be the one to leave is so alien he can’t even be offended. "You love this, though," he says, still trying to catch up. "I mean, not the parties or the photoshoots — but you love making music, working with other artists. You love all the collaboration and meeting fans and doing your stupid cover songs." Patrick’s just watching him, and David feels his tempo slow down. "I mean. Don’t you?"

"Not enough," Patrick says.

For a minute, anything might happen. David might go over to him and pull him into his arms, Patrick might reach out and kiss him, Alexis might call and break the silence, the whole building might collapse.

But then it’s over, and Patrick is heading for the door. "I have to go," he calls over his shoulder, and David doesn’t move to follow him.

🎼

"So I should probably fire you for losing track of him, is what I'm hearing," Stevie says from across the continent, a half hour later. David's texts and phone calls to Patrick have gone unanswered; the hotel staff have no idea where he went, just that he got a taxi. Twitter hasn't seen him, either, which is more worrying.

"Sure, fine," David says, pacing the room, the curve of his ear hot and tender from pressing it to his phone. He keeps getting distracted by the sight of Patrick's guitar, still propped up in the corner. "But in the meantime, do we need to like, drag the river? Or the ocean, or whatever it is? He's disappeared!"

"He hasn't disappeared, he called Alexis," she says, like that's any kind of reassurance. "And no, I'm not telling you where he is right now, because apparently you two had a bit of a lover’s quarrel and between that and, y'know, him just getting outed, we agreed he needs some space."

"'_We_'?" David shrieks, "'_We_ decided'?"

"_Yes_, David," Alexis yells in the background. Stevie makes a frustrated noise and puts him on speaker, which has the unfortunate effect of making Alexis even more audible. "Given that this is a crisis management situation and you are not that good in crises—"

"Excuse me—"

"I'm sorry, David, but when's the last time _you_ had to negotiate a truce between warring factions in time to get to Paris’s fourth thirtieth birthday party? _I'm_ the crisis manager at this company, so _I’m_ getting Patrick through this, _you _are going to keep quiet, and you guys can sort out your relationship issues once we get him through the VMAs."

"Be easier to do that if we knew whether or not you two still have a relationship to have issues with, though," Stevie commented, and David's never wished for psychic powers to strangle someone more.

"You are both going to hell," David informs them. His phone beeps with an incoming call — he has just enough time to get his hopes up before seeing "TV's Moira Rose" flash on the screen. "Oh, God, Mom's on the other line."

"Be strong, David!" Alexis calls out as Stevie hurriedly hangs up on him. David takes a deep breath to center himself, then another, then answers the phone.

"David, is that you? You really should be more punctual when picking up the phone, dear. You never know who might be calling and what opportunities they may be proffering!"

"Yeah, cell phones have had caller ID for a while, Mom," he sighs, collapsing down on the bed. "What do you want? Jocelyn's drafting a statement—"

"Oh, I'm sure that will all be dealt with expeditiously, never fear! No, this was in regards to yet another tantalizing nibble at the flashing fisherman's hook that is this company. No Labels Label wants to discuss a _lucrative_ offer, but insists on having the discussion in person. And as you are already ensconced in the City of Angels, I thought you might handle it for us today."

"Today? You set up a meeting _today_," but David really can't even pretend to be surprised. "You do realize that my professional and personal life is imploding right now, correct? That hasn't like, escaped your notice."

"David, you know I only wish for your romantic as well as financial stability! But from what Alexis has told me, you rather precipitated this particular contre-temps, so perhaps it would behoove you to focus on other aspects of the company while others are mopping up the ensuing imbroglio."

David grinds his teeth until he's sure one of them might crack, but — she's right. He's fucked things up just about as much as they can be reasonably fucked. "Fine. Send me the address."

"I shall! And you may even enjoy yourself; I understand that the emissary they are sending is an old friend of yours."

Any number of people from David's former life have come drifting back into his orbit, following Schitt Records’s success; David wouldn't call any of them friends. "Who?"

"A certain Sebastien Raine. I met him at a gallery opening once, years ago — very charming man. Did you know him well?"

David hangs up before his teeth actually shatter.

🎼

When Sebastien had dumped him ("come to the conclusion of our affiliation, David, please don't imbue this with the terminology of a quotidian relationship") David had deleted all the Instagram posts, the tweets, the reams of photos he'd saved on his phone to document something he couldn't believe was really happening. He hadn't wanted to remember how it felt to be the focus of so much attention, even for just a few weeks — before Sebastien's attention inevitably wandered. Nor had he wanted to remember what he'd done to try, desperately, to hold onto it. It had been easier to erase the evidence.

Patrick had found a stray picture, though, one evening when they'd been competing to see who had the most unfortunate selfie-stash on their phones. A picture of David in bed, Sebastien smirking over his shoulder; David froze halfway between grabbing to get his phone back and hurling himself into the sun. "Um."

But Patrick had smiled at him, warm and amused and a little bit smug. "You know," he said, putting the phone down and reaching for David, "I don’t mind seeing those old pictures. I get a kick out of them, if we’re being honest."

"Um," David repeated, even while he burrowed closer into Patrick's side, watching his face for signs of annoyance or jealousy or disgust. "You do?"

Patrick nodded and kissed him. "It reminds me what a bunch of morons you dated before me," he said, "Who never knew what they had."

Still, part of David is startled when he walks into the conference room. He'd expected someone untouchably beautiful, but the man lounging in a vintage Saarinen swivel chair is just… a guy, with a trendy haircut and trendy clothes and a trendy, handsome face. He doesn't make David's palms sweat or his heart race; when he looks up and smiles, David feels nothing but irritation.

He shuts the door behind him. "I understand you have a proposition," he says, and sits down at the table opposite. "So let's hear it."

Sebastien's smile widens. "You used to be better at phatic communication, David," he says. "How have you been, what's new in your life, that sort of thing."

"Except I don't care how you've been, and I sincerely doubt you have any interest in what's new in my life," David replies. His phone buzzes; it's not Patrick.** flying into lax tomorrow + got the room next to u **😙 says Alexis. He texts back **WHERE. IS. HE. **and puts the phone down. "So, since I have ten million other things to deal with today, can you wow me with No Label's offer? Thanks very much."

"Fine," Sebastien sighs, like he's indulging a tantrum. He nudges a file folder across the table. David opens it to a contract that makes him miss Patrick with a lead weight in his stomach, pinning him to the chair. It's a lot of money, or it _looks_ like a lot of money.

But David doesn't need to look at the contract; he can watch Sebastien, instead. "So what's the catch?" he says, closing the file.

"Must there be a catch?" Sebastien asks, pressing his hands to his heart in a cute parody of injured pride. "You don't think I could have convinced my superiors to get you a generous deal? For old time's sake?"

"No, I don't think that," David says, leaning back. His phone buzzes again; it’s still not Patrick. **chill david he's fine he's coming back tomorrow too but I’M handling him for the vmas so just focus on your stuff**.

**Patrick IS my stuff, thanks, where are you holding him hostage?**

**um rude considering of the two of us u arent the one whos been ransomed by ukranian oligarchs TWICE in 3 months**

"I'm sensing I don't have your full attention," Sebastien comments; David blinks up at him.

"I genuinely forgot you were here," he admits, and shoves his phone in his pocket before getting to his feet. "Look, my mother set this meeting up, so I'll take this back to Toronto and—"

"There is a catch," Sebastien says. "You were right about that."

David's not sure if he should sit down. "Ah."

"We heard about the video," says Sebastien, leaning forward until his elbows are on the table. "And we think it's an opportunity."

"An opportunity." David doesn't like the sound of that word in Sebastien's mouth. But he sits back down.

"Look, Patrick Brewer is your biggest client, recently outed, known for his romantic nature—"

David snorts. Last week Patrick had stolen one of each pair of socks David owned and put on a puppet show about how much the Baltimore Orioles suck. David had laughed so hard he'd nearly wet the bed.

"—and even with the video, we can make it clear it’s not a serious relationship. So, keep him unattached, dangle his appeal to both girls _and_ boys, he can hit gay icon status faster than Sam Smith. Give it a few years, he could be the Mariah Carey of the twenties."

"Okay, Patrick's never going to be the Mariah Carey of anything," David snaps, but it's reflex, a protective snarl around the hurt of _not a serious relationship_. "So your plan is to keep him single, indefinitely."

"It's what optimizes sales," Sebastien shrugs. "I thought that's what _you’d_ been doing, up 'til you got your sentiments involved."

Of course Sebastien knows; probably the whole industry does. David shuts his eyes for a second; when he opens them, Sebastien is watching him, thoughtful.

"Or maybe 'sentiments’ isn't the right word," he amends, waving a hand. "But it seems like a winning strategy. Speculation about his love life has certainly boosted sales. And now? Sky's the limit."

"So that’s the catch?" David asks, keeping his voice as level as possible. "I’m not seen with Patrick publicly, we keep our relationship secret—"

"_And_ you no longer manage him. In fact, the folks upstairs are pretty insistent that none of the Roses come with the company, and they’d like to have you and your sister sign a noncompete clause for two years. Hence the higher offer. _Much_ higher, from what I’ve heard."

David opens his mouth, then shuts it again. A dozen responses line up inside his mouth; he doesn’t say any of them.

"Look, David, company valuation notwithstanding, everyone knows you don’t want to be in this business. And now you won’t have to. Go open another little gallery or travel the world or do whatever else you’d like to do these days. You can even keep seeing Patrick." He smiles, wide and fake. "If that’s what the two of you want, afterwards."

David stands up. "I think we’re done."

Sebastien reaches over the table for a handshake. "Think about it. Not many companies are going to take care of you the way we will."

_You_, he says. David realizes there’s been no mention of the other artists, how No Labels would work with them. There wasn’t even a discussion about how Patrick would be treated. They were strictly commodities, objects of value.

David doesn’t take his hand. "It was nice seeing you again, Sebastien," he says, and walks out.

🎼

"Well, it’s not like he’s wrong, David," says Dad. David’s in the car on the way back to the hotel, for lack of any better ideas (**stop asking where he is u sound like my ex he’s FINE **Alexis texts him), and he’d called Dad for the same reason.

He’s now regretting that. "Okay, does everybody think I’m just going to run screaming for the hills the minute we sell the company?" he demands, waving his pinky fingers in lieu of his hands, since he’s on Highland and needs to stay at ten and two.

"Of course not, son," Dad says, soothing. "We know how much you hate hiking."

"Besides, the _entire point_ of what we’ve been doing for the last three and a half years is so we _can _sell the company," he says. "We find a whole bunch of talented people who make the company lots of money, we sell the company, we make lots of money. Running for the hills was _literally_ the plan."

"Well, sure," says Dad, with that jovial tone that David’s been hearing all his life whenever his dad is trying to say something awkward. "It’s just that—"

"What? Are you trying to tell me Patrick and Jake and Ronnie aren’t _enough_, all of a sudden? And Twyla," he adds, begrudgingly, because she’s been doing surprisingly well on the college circuit. "Sebastien said something about 'company valuation,' so what else could he possibly want us to give him?"

"Nothing, nothing!" Dad says. "It’s not anything they want, it’s what they _don’t_ want."

"Yeah, speaking of which, there’s a _noncompete clause _that he wants me and Alexis to sign. So they don’t want us working for them but they don’t want us working for anyone else. It’s insane."

"It’s not insane," says Dad. "It’s… well."

David clenches at the wheel so hard he can hear it creaking. "'Well.’ _What_."

"It’s just… there’ve been other offers, son. Quite a few other offers, over the past few months. Schitt Records is turning quite the profit, and even with the way the incentives are structured, we’re doing very well for ourselves."

"I thought this was only the second offer," says David. He can _feel_ his blood pressure rising.

"It’s the second offer that releases us from working here," says Dad, all in a rush. "All the rest have stipulated that you and Alexis, or you and Alexis and me, stay on for a period of two to five years."

David has no idea what that means. "I have no idea what that means."

"It means that it’s not just Patrick and Ronnie and everyone we’ve signed who’ve contributed to this company’s success, David," Dad says, and there’s something very weird going on in his voice. "Our family — you and Alexis, especially — are the ones who made it a success."

"Stevie helped," he says, on autopilot. He’s pretty sure his dad is _proud _of him. This is incredibly disturbing.

"She did — she does. But she doesn’t have a stake."

"No," David says. "She doesn’t."

He can feel something, a strange niggle at the back of his head: an idea. A stupid one, probably, one that could fail just like his galleries had, just like his entire life had before Schitt Records. But his palms are sweating and his heart is racing, for the first time since the last time he saw Patrick’s face.

"What was that, son?"

"I’ve got to go," David says, and hangs up.

Two hours later, mostly because traffic in Los Angeles is any joke you’d care to throw at it, he finally gets to Rachel’s house. The guard at the gate gives him a once-over before waving him through.

Rachel comes out to meet him, looking worried. "Is Patrick okay?" she asks, fumbling for her phone. "He said he got into Toronto, but—"

"He’s fine," David says, "At least I think he is, since he won’t talk to me and Alexis is proving to be as effective a cockblock as she was when I was seventeen, but at least I now know that he’s in Toronto, so that’s something. But," he adds, trying not to split focus, "I actually came to talk to you about something else."

Rachel slowly puts her phone back in her pocket. "Okay," she says. "Shoot."

He takes another deep breath. "This morning, when you said you were tired of working for someone else, that you wanted a stake in what you made — did you mean that?"

"I — yes, yeah," she says. "But I mean, not even Schitt Records is going to offer me that kind of deal, that’s not how it works."

"Right," David nods, "But what if it _could_ be how it works?"

"David, what exactly are you saying?" Rachel ask, and David only realizes she’s smiling because he can feel himself smiling back.

"I’ve got an idea," he says. "Can I come in?"


	6. Chapter 6

They talk for hours, curled up in Rachel’s office with the Titian and the apparently-cool guitar on the walls, David trying to diagram the idea percolating in his brain and Rachel running her hands through her hair so often he’s worried she’s going to damage the keratin treatment. A very nice assistant brings them coffee at regular intervals; as the night wears on he turns into a different assistant, which leads David to realize the time.

"Oh, my God, it’s three-thirty in the _morning_," he mutters. It’s not actually that late, within the context of his old life and his new job; most of his twenties had been spent staring at the ceiling, waiting for the dark to be over. His thirties should have been worse, destitute and clawing, but so far he’s been too exhausted to spend much time staring at ceilings when he finally tumbles into a bed. He’s used to pulling his consciousness past its breaking point, used to long nights that blur into the next day without a break. But tonight it feels like he’s been awake for a week, everything scratched and dulled, his eyes not focusing.

Rachel lets out a yawn big enough to crack her jaw and stretches, shaking her hands out. "Yeah," she says, "And this is — I like this, we need to work on it, but we definitely need to sleep more."

"Yes," David agrees, nodding and making absolutely no move to get up. His hotel room is miles away and all that’s waiting for him there is an empty bed and an abandoned guitar. He’ll need to bring it with him, he realizes, to the VMAs tomorrow. Patrick will need it, probably. His phone hasn’t buzzed all night — Patrick could be anywhere, in Toronto or San Diego or New Zealand or… probably not New Zealand, if he’s coming back tomorrow. David’s never gone to sleep, he realizes, in all the time he’s known Patrick, without knowing where he is.

"There’s a guest bedroom — there are, in fact, four guest bedrooms," Rachel amends, climbing to her feet and offering him a hand up. "We can talk more in the morning."

"Yes," he repeats, and takes her hand.

She leads him down a hallway into a neat, only moderately soulless bedroom with a pair of pajamas in what he’s pretty sure is going to be his size laid out on the bed. "Sometimes I really miss being rich," he sighs, and Rachel laughs.

"You know, I haven’t asked," she says, lingering in the doorway for a minute. "How you’re doing. With Patrick and—" she wobbles her head to encompass the entirety of everything that’s gone wrong in the past twenty-four hours.

"Are you proposing we start a Patrick Brewer Exes Club?" David asks.

She gives him a look. "You’re not his ex, David. Not unless you want to be."

David sits down on the bed, smoothing his hand along the soft cotton of the pajamas. "I don’t want to be," he says, very quiet, so quiet that maybe he didn’t say it at all.

Rachel crosses over to him and leans in, pressing a kiss to his forehead, like someone applying a bandaid to a scrape. "Go to sleep," she instructs, and David does.

🎼

The next morning, armed with yet more coffee, he gets Alexis and Stevie into a video conference. They’re both unbearably snippy about it until David manages to get his plan through their heads, and for a little bit afterward too.

"You want us to be like, a record company _co-op_?" Alexis says, after forty-five minutes of careful explanations.

"No," David scoffs, at the exact same time that Rachel exclaims, "Yes!" which derails the discussion for an hour or so.

But Alexis is slightly more right than she is wrong, for once; a company that gives artists full control not only of their albums but of the machinery that promotes it. Musicians — "And spoken-word artists," Alexis adds, which leads them on a fifteen minute debate on what to call comedians — buy in not with cash, but with a debut album; they retain rights to the songs but the profits go to the company.

"And if we’ve done our job right, by the time the second album is ready to debut, they don’t want to go anywhere else," Rachel says. "There’s no one else out there giving any artist that kind of control with the PR and management setup you have; they can try their luck on Soundcloud or whatever, but this gives people a real shot. And if they decide to go elsewhere, we retain profits for three years, long enough that if they actually hit it big somewhere else we’re likely to get some bump. But honestly? I would’ve killed for a company like this when I was starting out."

"So this is going to make money how?" Stevie asks, her hand fisted in her hair as she scribbles on a notepad in front of her. "My brain is starting to go to mush."

"We can have accountants come in later," David assures her. "But—"

"Or we can have them come in now," Alexis says, perking up as she jumps out of her chair and darts offscreen. David has just enough time to worry that she’s going to do something horrible, like drag Patrick in from God knows where to make him part of this conversation, before Alexis is dragging Patrick in from God knows where to make him part of this conversation.

"Okay, so, say everything you just said all over again," Alexis commands, after shoving Patrick into her seat.

David can’t get his mouth to move. Patrick looks washed out in the unforgiving glare of Facetime; the blue shirt he’s wearing might be the same one he’d worn when he’d walked out of the hotel room yesterday morning. His hair is a mess, or as much a mess as it can be; David thinks he can see actual _stubble_ along his jawline. David would give everything he ever owned to be able to touch him.

But Rachel is already off and running, explaining how she’ll finance the initial buy-out for Mom and Dad and then bring the options to the musicians — "and spoken-word artists"—to see if they want in.

"So this isn’t — you’re really thinking about doing this?" Patrick asks. "This isn’t just some… I don’t know—"

"What, you thought it was a ploy to get you to talk to David?" Alexis says, then immediately adds, "That would’ve been a great idea, actually—"

"We’re really thinking about doing this," David says, before he can stop himself. "What do _you_ think?"

Facetime is horrible because you can’t tell anything from someone’s line of sight; Patrick could be looking at David’s image on the screen, or Rachel, or his own tiny image in the corner. But his smile is something David’s only seen when they’re alone, Patrick reaching up to trace a finger down David’s nose or along his cheek.

"I think it’s very inventive," Patrick says. He frowns and grabs for a notepad, stealing Stevie’s pen. Over her objections, he adds, "But if Rachel’s providing seed money, there are pretty significant tax implications depending on where the company’s based. Are you planning on an initial 51% stakeholder? The way this is structured initially is going to impact who can buy in, as well." He looks around. "Anybody have a TI calculator?"

"A what," Stevie doesn’t-ask, squinting at him.

David feels himself breathe out, and breathe back in.

🎼

They don’t make it very far — Alexis and Patrick have a flight to catch, so it’s only a half hour or so until she’s hustling him out of his chair. "Come on, missing the VMAs wouldn’t be a cute look, okay?"

"I—" Patrick’s glance goes from Stevie to Alexis to the screen. "Can I have a minute with—"

"_No_, very much not right now," Alexis chirps. "After this is all done, sure! Then you guys just — have your little moment. But we’re getting you through tonight so let’s go, okay? Okay." Whatever else she was going to say gets cut off when Stevie reaches forward, waves brightly, and hangs up.

"So those are my new partners?" Rachel asks, sounding a lot less trepidatious than David would have been at this point. "They seem… nice."

"That’s the least accurate description for any of them," David counters.

She laughs and shakes her head. "It’s a good idea, David, and I don’t think Patrick would agree with me if he didn’t believe that, too. Now go get ready, the VMAs are going to be a comprehensive shitshow and I won’t be there to throw elbows at people trying to mess with Patrick."

"I — you’re not going?" David doesn’t understand. She was nominated, Best Album and Best Music Video. And she wasn’t even sure to lose, unlike Patrick.

"Yeah, I’m heading out to Philly. Fundraiser thing, for the hurricane. Besides, Taylor’s going to be there and between the people thinking Patrick and I were a couple and the people who thought, or who… anyway, it’s probably better just to stay away."

David would hardly call himself an expert in the subject of genuine human emotion, but he wants to do something, anything that will get the blank, bright smile that doesn’t reach Rachel’s eyes off her face. "You could always go and let Taylor sing some embarrassing song that she dedicates to you," he offers. "It worked great on me."

"She’s not going to dedicate any songs to me," Rachel sighs. "But hey, here’s hoping Patrick picks something _really _embarrassing tonight. You’ve earned it." And she shoos him out of her house and back into his fugly rental car.

He spends the rest of the day coordinating with Stevie and the rest of the team back in Toronto, getting updates on the video’s media coverage. So far his name hasn’t come up, which is slightly reassuring but mostly insulting — it hasn’t been _that _long since he was a regular tag on [perezhilton.com](http://perezhilton.com) — but that’s in part by design, with Alexis and Stevie working the "just a small-town boy living in a lonely world" angle. The worst thing so far is Buzzfeed’s earnest article about the prospective men Patrick _could_ be dating, all of whom have better jawlines than David.

Alexis texts intermittently from the air, instructions that David ignores about how she wants her hotel room set up or catty observations about the fellow passengers. There’s no word from Patrick, and David writes about thirty different texts to him that he erases before he hits send.

When they’re somewhere over Nebraska, he finally cracks. **So did you confiscate his phone, or what?**

**I mean no but I do HAVE it **she sends, ten agonizing minutes later.** he gave it to me yesterday told me not to give it back until later and I guess its not later**

David doesn’t know how to respond to that, but before he can figure it out, there’s another text from her

**I asked like three times but idk anyway we’ll meet u backstage k don’t forget the guitar**

An hour later, just as he’s finished getting his hair in order, the phone dings one more time.

**he’s doing fine btw some old lady at the airport gave him a sudoku book**

David doesn’t trust himself to respond; he grabs the guitar and keeps tight hold of it on the way to the venue, like it’s something precious to be hung on a wall, something that’s bound to break.

🎼

Backstage is a predictable zoo — David’s never attended the VMAs specifically, but all awards shows are essentially variations on the theme of coked-up chaos. JLo’s hairstylist compliments his eyebrows at one point, which is nice, but it’s not until Patrick is already coming offstage from announcing the nominees for Best Power Anthem with Halsey that David actually finds him.

"Hi," he says, and immediately winces. "I um, meant to have a better opener. Than that."

Patrick smiles like it’s being pulled out of him, begrudgingly. "I don’t know, it’s kind of a classic."

Halsey, bless her beautiful heart, says "Okay, bye!" and lets her handler whisk her away.

Patrick blinks after her for a minute before turning back to David. "I um," he says, gesturing vaguely at the guitar. "I’m gonna use the piano, instead. So."

"Oh," says David. "Okay, so I’ll continue to be in charge of… this."

"Thanks," Patrick says as he wipes his hands on his jeans — and it’s a symptom of just how much of a mess David is that he’s only now noticing that Patrick attended an _awards show_ in his business major uniform, complete with his hideous braided belt.

He opens his mouth to say something about it, make some biting remark about Patrick’s commitment to the bit or lamenting that he hadn’t brought the fringed vest or an offer to burn that shirt later in the evening, before the contact high of being near Patrick wears off and he remembers: they’re still fighting. Patrick’s still angry and David’s still terrified and all of this is ready to topple over and smash on the smooth black surface of the stage floor.

"I didn’t call you," he says instead. "Yesterday, or today. I didn’t call and I didn’t text. Alexis said she has your phone so maybe you thought that I had. But I didn’t."

"Oh," Patrick says, looking down at the strap of the guitar case where it’s clenched in David’s hand. "Okay."

"I wanted to, though." David can’t stop his fucking mouth. "I wanted to know where you were and if you were all right and if you were—" There are too many words to end that sentence so he stops. "I wanted to know where you were," he repeats. "I was worried."

Patrick finally looks up at him, his eyes over-bright and like nothing else David’s ever looked at. "David," he says, leaning forward just a little, just enough.

Which is _of course _when Alexis decides to pop her little head in. "Okay, _no_," she announces, flapping her hands between them.

"Oh, my God," David says as he stumbles away from her flailing. "No _what_?"

"'No what’ _what_?" she demands, a little incoherently. "There are like ten _million_ cameras around here and also Chris Pine, over there? Who can’t keep his mouth shut for shit. So like, whatever heartfelt thing happening here needs to be put on pause, okay?"

"Nothing’s happening," Patrick protests, which is a bit much considering he’d been _tearing up _a second ago.

"Okay," says David, "Fine. I just — all right, you know what? As your _manager_, which I still am, I would at least like to know where you were yesterday."

Patrick squints at him. "You what? Why does it matter?"

"Because you _disappeared_—"

“I didn’t disappear, David—”

“I didn’t know where you were! Apparently only _Alexis_ knew, and I’m sorry but she’s been kidnapped seven times so her sense of when to worry isn’t really that reliable."

"Excuse you, six, that one time with Nic doesn’t count," Alexis protests, plucking at Patrick’s elbow.

"And I deserved to at least be appraised so that I could have arranged bail money or a ransom or—"

“I went home, all right?" Patrick bursts out. He lets out a breath. "I went home and I told my mom and dad that I was in — that I’m gay. That’s what I was doing, if that's okay with you."

“It is," David says. "It's — yes, it's okay. I'm glad."

“Oh my _God_, I hate you both," Alexis huffs as she looks down at her phone. "Patrick, your solo’s up in five, so we _literally_ have to go."

But Patrick’s got his feet planted the way David’s seen a hundred times, a thousand, solid and immovable and waiting for David to change his mind. “So are we — we’re — what are we, now?” he asks. “Manager and managee? Dating? Boyfriends? Business partners?”

“We’re…" _Yes_, he almost says. _Yes, everything, all of it, let me have it_. But even as he opens his mouth, he can’t push the words out of his lungs.

David has wanted all his life, wanted things and experiences and people and affection and respect and more things, when he couldn’t get anything else. He’s ached for so long that the blissful relief of _having_, even for just a little while, had been barely noticeable. But now, with all the horror of losing it slamming up against him, he can’t make himself admit it.

"We’re whatever you want us to be,” he says instead.

Patrick’s jaw clenches and he takes a breath. “I want — this is insane. I have to go.”

David’s heard that twice now in the past few days. It still feels like a punch to the gut. “Of course. Good luck.”

Alexis, who’s been making increasingly urgent faces, finally drags him away. David watches them for as long as he can keep them in sight, Alexis’s tiara and Patrick’s auburn hair catching the muted lights backstage until they disappear behind a curtain.

Now seems like a really good time for a nervous breakdown, but David’s interrupted by a shoulder-check that nearly snaps his arm off. “What the hell—”

A man roughly the size of a building peers down at him. "Sorry about that," he says, his voice so low it seems to be coming out of his feet.

"Oh my god, are you okay? Are you hurt? I think they have a medic back here, they keep one on call ever since 2013 when Stefani cut her tits to hell on that metal bikini."

David's distracted from rubbing at his dislocated shoulder by _Taylor Swift_, towering over him in five-inch heels and looking worried. "Um. I'm good. But thank you."

She squints for a second, her expression abruptly clearing. "Wait — are you David? Rose? Patrick Brewer's—"

"Manager," he says. "Yes."

"Right," she says, her eyes narrowed. Building-Sized Man clears his throat, which sounds like a grenade going off, but she curls her arm around his like they're taking a stroll down by the river instead of side-stepping the approximately thirty thousand people who've been crammed back here. "Look, David — do you mind if I call you David?"

"I'm pretty sure you're allowed to call me whatever you want," he says, honestly.

"David. Okay, listen, this is really none of my business, I mean I don't know you, or Patrick really, just what Rachel's told me, but—"

"Oh, god," David realizes, "Has she been sending you the—"

"The fanfic? Yes, she has, and we can talk about what an asshole she is at another time, because _wow_," Taylor Swift says. She's somehow maneuvered them into a little alcove off to the side of the stage, and Building-Sized Man takes up position in front of them; it's like being in a very oddly ventilated closet. "But I wanted to ask if you and Patrick are still—" she bites her lip. "I’m just asking because you know, all those rumors about him and Rachel, and I’d have for Rachel to be hurt. Or you," she adds, incredibly unconvincingly. "Or Patrick," which sounds kind of untrue.

David gapes at her. "Let me make sure I understand — you’re asking me if Patrick and I are a couple because you’re worried that if we break up, Patrick might make a move on Rachel?"

"I mean, not _worried," _she says, hurriedly. "Rachel should date whoever she wants. And stuff. But I just thought — I mean, from what she's said, it seems like you two are really good for each other. And it’d be a real shame if you allowed fear of backlash to affect what you have."

"I'm sorry," David says, because _what_, "Are you seriously telling _me_ that we should go public with _our_ big queer love?"

Taylor Swift furrows her eyebrows, and it really is just as adorable as it looks on TV. "I mean… yes?"

"Okay, then by all means, ladies first," David says, his brain catching up a few seconds later that yes, he _is_ snotting off at Taytay.

"What do you—" Taylor Swift blinks. "What are you talking about?"

"I’m talking about you and Rachel and your, what, eleven _hundred_ fanfics celebrating _your_ big queer love?" David makes a gesture and accidentally hits Building-Sized Man on the back. "Sorry. Ow. Sorry."

"No problem."

Taylor Swift is still looking baffled. "I — she's not — she doesn't — wait, did she say something? About big, um, something?"

"Oh, my god, this is worse than high school," David sighs. "Yes, she’s said quite a lot. Most of it while she was drunk, admittedly."

But Taytay is too busy having an existential and sexual crisis. "She's never — we're friends! I thought she just sent me those fics as a joke! And like, those flowers on the anniversary of when we met," she adds. "And the matching necklaces that say 'OTP.' And that time she asked me to go with to that villa in Umbria. Wait a second."

"Okay, so clearly you're processing a lot right now," David says, trying to edge around Building-Sized Man, "So I'll—"

"Oh my God, I have to get out of here," Taylor Swift mutters, pulling out her phone. "Rachel's in Philly tonight, right? At Franklin?"

David has no idea, but he nods helpfully.

"Okay, Nigel!" It takes David a second to realize she's talking to Building-Sized Man. "We gotta go."

"Aren't you performing in fifteen?" Apparently Nigel rumbles, but he's already pulling out his own phone.

"I could not give the tiniest of fucks about the VMAs right now," she informs him, and turns to David, yanking him into a hug. "You — you're sure about this? I mean, Rachel? She likes me?"

“She — yeah, she does,” David says. He’s sure of _that_ much, at least.

Taylor Swift smiles; it’s not the one David’s seen on TV, polite and wholesome. She looks incandescent. “David Rose, as someone who’s about to go public with my big queer love? You should _definitely_ go public with your big queer love. Because… if you’ve got it, don’t let it go.”

And then she’s gone, disappearing into the crowd and leaving David with a sore shoulder and a heart that’s going about a million miles a minute. But she’s right.

It’s all but impossible for anyone not accompanied by a building-sized man to make headway through the press of people, but David somehow washes up on the wings just as the presenters are heading up to the podium. Patrick’s at the piano already, waiting for the curtain to rise. His back is to David, and the only sensible thing to do is wait for him to perform and grab him afterwards.

David steps out onto the stage, still holding the stupid guitar and ignoring the frantic hisses of a dozen different stage hands and Alexis’s bleating “David! No!” The presenters are still talking, and David makes it to the bench and manages to sit down before his legs give out. His heart’s going so fast it might be humming.

Patrick startles, looking up at him with wide, brown-black eyes. “David?”

“You asked what I wanted,” David says, as fast as he can, as fast as his heart’s beating. “And what I want is for you to cook your weird kale and sausage dishes for me and I want to watch movies with you on your crappy TV. And I want to hold your hand when we’re walking down the street and I want to kiss you — I mean, I want to kiss you all the time, but I want to kiss you where anyone can see. Where everyone can see. And that doesn’t mean giving this up, because I want this too — I want to be mean to asshole producers who aren’t appreciating you sufficiently and I want to argue with you about your rider and I want to lose another negotiation with Sheila, because you’re right, I hate doing this but I love doing it for you, and with you. And if you want to throw it all away that’s fine, too, because what’s important is you. I don’t want to ever not have you in my life, ever again, my life was… it’s better, with you in it. It’s better than anything I’ve ever dreamed of, you’re better than anything… so that’s what I want, okay? And I couldn’t live with myself if it took even three minutes longer for you to know that, so—”

A half-dozen stage hands and someone who might be Nigel’s big brother are heading for him, so he scrambles to his feet. There's applause coming from the audience; David's time is up.

But Patrick turns to the various scowling faces and says, "It's fine, guys. He can stay. Can you take that guitar off him?" And he smiles up at David and moves over a little bit more. "C'mon," he says.

David sits back down, and the curtain starts to rise.

Patrick's still smiling. "I would like to dedicate this song," he says, his mic live now, the words reverberating through the hall, "To someone very special in my life: David Rose."

There's some a muttering in the crowd, but David can't hear them, not while Patrick plays. It's a song David heard countless times along endless miles of highway, arguing with Patrick about the divas of the 90s, Patrick trying to sing along while David turned up the volume to drown him out. Patrick’s transposed it into his own range, brought the melody down to something longing instead of triumphant. It doesn't sound like a celebration of a love you have, but a declaration of the love you hope for, a love you want.

It's Patrick's best performance yet.

The audience cheers at the end, a wall of sound that almost deafens him. But he can still hear Patrick say, "I love you, too."


End file.
